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. Already you are clean because of
the word that I have spoken to you.
Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by
itself unless it abides in the vine, and 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 bears much fruit, for apart from me you can
do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me,
he's thrown away like a branch and Withers, and the branches
are gathered, thrown into the fire and burn.
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 and
so prove 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've kept my Father's commandments and abide in His
love. These things I've spoken to you,
that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.
As we know, this is a significant part of the Gospel
of John starting from chapter 13 on through 18.
These are gems that are not in the other gospels.
The incredible passion and love of the Lord of the universe
stooping down on his knees with a water basin and a towel and
and washing his disciples feet in chapter 13, the way he has
instituted the Lord's Supper in the middle of the Passover meal,
all these details. It is a full incredible moment.
Already they have the disciples and us have benefited from this
profound teaching and demonstrations of his love.
This is last words, kind of kind of poignant severity of what is
about to happen, which they are not aware of, right?
The disciples. And so Jesus is loving them to
the end. It is intimate, it is
relational, and it is intense. And so here he is in this part
of of this incredible set of passages that we know are all
flowing together in one stream in one moment, so pregnant with
meaning and not ever to be dismissed.
And as he engages in the very first verse, he completes that
the 7th and final I am statement by saying I am the true Vine and
my father is the vine dresser. These I am statements just ring
of truth. They know that goes right back
to Exodus when when the Lord God himself on the mountain said I
am that I am and and here he is completing the 7th I am
statement. The other six are I'm the bread
of life, I'm the light of the world, I'm the door of the
sheep. I am the resurrection and the
life. I am the Good Shepherd.
I am the way, the truth and the life, and then here I am the
true vine. And he's diving in to really
what he's picked up already from the previous chapter in 14, this
relationship that we all are embracing as a total mystery.
How is the Trinity to be? How do we understand that Jesus
is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus and that we are in
Jesus? How do we grasp at this?
And he gives us this metaphor of vine and branches and helps us
to understand this relational way that we are to live.
The this passage is truly baked into the discipleship DNA of
Park City's Presbyterian Church. It is woven in different places
and you see vining branches and all.
For 30 years it's been that way, and it's incredible.
And you would think we would be experts in this chapter, but we
are just learning more and more, are we not?
Just the depth, the intimacy of what is transpiring here.
So it's amazing if we slow down and we think about a a metaphor
that meant a lot to the first hearers of this and even the
first early church because they understood this.
But we not very many of us are farmers, we're not in
agriculture. We are a very high tech society
and we are very much based in information and in technology
and not growing things. And so here is this botanical
profound insight. So it's just good to slow down
and kind of think about what it is we're taking in.
So we've got vine and branches. We've got the vine dresser being
our God the Father, and then Jesus has the true vine.
And then the branches are divided into groups, right?
I mean, what I want to do is just hit a few highlights of
this and pull out a few meanings rather and talk about now what,
how does this impact us? And so as we think about buying
in branches, we know that there's two sets, right?
We've got the the ones, the vines, the branches that are
going to bear fruit and that he will prune and then the ones
that don't and they will throw into the fire.
And it's and it is, it is a it is an interesting and and
unnerving a little bit. Where are we in that order?
Which vine, which branch are we in?
Are we connected or not? And this metaphor, it all is
leading to fruit is producing fruit, right?
That is the purpose. That is the purpose of all of it
is that these vines, we do not have vineyards just for beauty,
right? It is is produce the fruit and
so how do they do that and what is that?
Well, it takes very careful, meticulous work.
It's it's done by hand and it is it is done in here falling
metaphor in love. But the fruit should be Christ
like character. We can think about the fruit of
the spirit of Galatians 5. The fruit should also be
obedience. The fruit should also have an
impact on our prayer life. As we see that, we can ask
anything and we know He'll do it as we are abiding.
And then the fruit should be the impact on others, be it through
evangelism, living the gospel, using our words for the gospel,
demonstrating it, and discipline.
Do you know in this body every single one of you just about
could reach out and minister to someone younger than you and
make huge difference and what you think about who you pouring
into do you is there fruit of your ministry by of abiding of
our of our main relational life in Christ.
So it's visible. The fruit is is is known.
It's not hidden and it's all of life.
Everything's connected right. We're all it's this whole thing
is not we're not producing widgets.
Our lives are being changed as Christ is in US and he is
demonstrating the whole relational with father as his
father and then now in US. And so this all points to this
abiding love and we think about how significant the fruit of
love is when you think about just since in chapter 13, there
are probably 10 key verbally explicit and also demonstrative
ways that Jesus is loving the disciples.
You think about it in 13-1 he got having loved his own who
were in the world. He loved them to the end and
then a new command I give you love one another and 15/9 is the
Father's loved me. So I've loved you.
My command is this love one another.
No greater love is this than to lay down your life for your
friends. I have called you my friends
though, as the Father has loved me.
Now I'm loving you. This love, love, love, love,
love, agape, agape, gape. A lot of abiding and a lot of
agape of unconditional love pouring out.
It is the most visible, incredible part of all this,
just woven through there in his humility, Christ is
demonstrating what it means to abide with the Father.
And then he's giving us the road map of how we ought to live in
love. And this is not wimpy, Pansy
love. This is pulled, humble,
powerful, transformational love. You know this.
Many of you have experienced this.
And this abiding is not something we do for one hour on
Sunday. We know it's perpetual, it's
ongoing, it's deepening, it's producing, pruning, producing
and pruning and it's continually going on.
What season are you in right now?
Are you being pruned or are you? Is fruit being produced in you?
Because we're all going in through different seasons of
this, different challenges each row, we could testify to what is
going on inside your own soul that maybe no one else knows.
Is the Lord pruning you in love? Is he producing fruit?
That is incredible. We should celebrate.
So the goal of all this, the goal is to produce fruit and
it's again, it's not like our goal is not to climb Everest or
win the Olympics here. The goal is to absolutely embody
Christ's love and produce that fruit of the Spirit in us, the
fruit of ministry and the fruit of an effective prayer life.
So pruning is necessary. We need pruning and every vine
grower as the as the vine dresser, the farmer, the
gardener, depending on what version you have, he will have
that careful tender process. You cannot do this by robots,
cannot do this by AI, you cannot do this by machine.
You have to do it individually and go and prune the leaves,
taking the branches, lifting up the the the fruit so that the
prune will help the wheat branches be strengthened and
that that every connection allows the fruit of the vine to
flow. This is our lives, right?
This is how we go in and out with the Lord.
The Lord is working inside of us to that end.
How do we to handle and think about those branches that the
Lord takes and throws into the fire?
How do we understand that? Well, we have great confidence
in our reformed theology to know that Lord, the Lord's
irresistible grace, he has died for his chosen ones.
And because of that, we know that if we're in him, we cannot
lose faith. Some people have used a passage
like this to talk about losing salvation, which is not correct.
And we know this. You're the 8 O clock crowd, you
know, So we got this. But the reality is, is that a
great scholar, Leon Morris, points out that there's a little
bit of a Greek composition here that shows that it at the
outset, probably those branches were never in, never connected,
never having the SAP go through them.
And the direct connect is probably someone like Judas who
is never in Christ. So that branch is broken off and
thrown into the fire. And so the others who may be
church attenders or whatnot, but we're never and never showing
any fruit. And I think that's probably the
main thing is that there's explicitly no evidence over time
of any fruit whatsoever. And so that makes it more
helpful for us to understand what's happening here.
But the focus is really not of the branches being thrown away,
but on the taking care of the branches and pruning them and,
and preparing them to bear more fruit.
That is the focus. That is the then the whole point
of this and so that none of us can do this on our own.
Jesus is trying to tell the disciples do not believe in your
own independent way of doing this.
You have to depend on me. Verse 5 makes that explicitly
clear, does it not apart from me, you can do nothing.
So we know that and Amen indeed, because we we are especially in
Dallas, we're like, we can do this, you know, on our own
strength and it is easy sometimes there are a lot of
gifted people with incredible skills and deep resources and we
can make things happen on our own.
But they that wait on the Lord will renew their strength.
They'll mount up like wings, like eagles.
They'll run and not go weary, walk and not go faint.
We must find ourselves dependent on the Lord and waiting for the
Lord and that posture of abiding.
So just to think about abiding a little bit, what is it?
What does that really mean? Abide, abide, abide.
We talk about this all the time. Do not hear the word abide at
least once a week at Park Cities Presbyterian Church.
It's awesome. We need to keep it reminding
each other. Abide, abide.
Do you know that abiding is actually in mine and Pete's job
description? We must abide as a part of our
job. How awesome is that?
That is what all of us. It's really in all of our job
descriptions of life. But to remain, to stay where we
are, to continually to remain dependent, to build our home in
him, to stay connected to him, to slow down and listen to him.
We're remaining so that we hear him, we know him, we're embedded
in him, we are positionally in Christ, but we know that we can
drift and forget, lose our hearing, all of a sudden run
into independence, and all we have to do is just turn right
back, to simply begin again. That is why the liturgy is so
helpful, is it not? We always have confession.
We always have a clear assurance of pardon and forgiveness
because if it's just one prayer away, 1 acknowledgement, I
cannot do this. I need you, Jesus.
So this is what Jesus does. Jesus makes this incredibly
poignant, and he reminds us that remaining in him is not just
passivity. There is rest in remaining in
Him and it's not like we're storing up and then like a
battery and charged up and then we go run on our own way and
then come back and re plug in. But it's continual, it's
flowing, it's organic, it's botanical, it is showing this
vine and the branch reality. So dependent, ongoing, one
source for our life in Christ. This is what the discipleship is
with the Lord and this is what why he's trying to tell them
this because he is just hours away from going to the cross
knowing what is happening here. What's incredible about abiding
is the reciprocal reality of what's happening here.
So just track again, it's if we think of it as abiding, it's
like I got a pony up. I've got to pull myself up.
I've got to abide, I've got to make this happen.
We're missing this whole reciprocal of Christ and us and
we in Christ. So be encouraged by that.
The best part of it is that if if it's just us trying to obey,
then we're missing the point of abiding that he is working in
US, whoever abides in me and I in him.
So each of us are experiencing as we slow down and receive what
Christ has for us. We're able to abide as a result
of Him in US and we in Him. So it's not grappling up to try
to get it and earn it. We already have it in Christ.
So be encouraged by that and live in that reality of that.
He is in US. He's creating desire in us.
If any of you, if any of us all of a sudden feel a tangent
conviction, but something in our lives that maybe we need to
consider, that is proof we're abiding.
If any of us feel a nudge to go and to talk to someone, go
encourage someone, make that phone call, write that e-mail,
that is proof that we're abiding as the Lord is working and is
nudging us, creating desire to be involved in God's church.
That is the Lord working in you. Conviction of sin is the Lord
working in you. It is, it is something to be
encouraged in our very discouraging days that you may
not realize that you're even abiding as the Lord is speaking
and moving and prompting and giving you courage to take that
next step. To know that this is all leading
up to this profound reality that I wish we could spend the next
five weeks on, which is our union in Christ.
Because all this comes together in our union with Christ, that
we are in Christ, that he is in us, that we have this
relationship in such a profound way.
I would encourage all of you all to study up a little bit on this
word union with Christ and, and how it encompasses all of our,
of our justification, our sanctification, our adoption,
our sonship, our identity in Christ.
It's a profound reality that we need to encourage ourselves
with. That we need to once again kind
of marinate in the reality of our union because this really
abiding John 15 is really nailing and not if the word
union is not not in there, but it's all baked in.
Just think about our confession like one of them that we use all
the time the Heidelberg confession.
We think about what is our only comfort in life and death that I
belong body and soul to my Savior.
You know, when we think about we and him and he and us, it it's
reflected in so many of the confessions that our life is
hidden in Christ. Do you know Paul never uses the
word Christian? It's always in Christ, in him,
in the Lord. The identity of the New
Testament church. They rarely use the word
Christian. It was always, I'm in him, we
are in him. That's how they thought and
that's how we need to recapture. That is taking the essence of
what so much of this chapter is all about reminding us it's
relational. It's it's not I'm achieving this
goal and I'm working hard to win to do this.
It's it's this relational reality that we're in.
That is what it's about in Christ.
That's how Paul looked at it in Ephesians 1.
Paul just, you know, hammers this incredible identity of who
we are. And he reminds us over and over
that we're predestined in Him, we're reconciled in him, we've
been pardoned in Him, and on and on and on we've been united with
Him. We see that Christ is at work in
so many ways. And so we have to do what John
Owen talks about it and to labor to draw near.
We have the labour to draw near. It's both active and passive.
Abiding is both a command and a description.
And so how's that going for you? How's it going with your
labouring to carve out time to spend with the Lord?
How's it going with the fruit producing in your life?
And just one or two final things before we close.
I think about this passage is so relational that you can't miss
the reality of the intimacy between that Christ describes
with his Father that he is the vine and the Father is the vine
dresser, the gardener, the farmer, the one, the master and
he's he's perfectly yielding and abiding with the Father and it
affects all the other relationships.
So our vertical relationship with Christ should be affecting
all of our horizontal relationships.
But let's be honest, people sometimes are the problem,
right? I mean, people are sometimes
difficult. People at church can be grumpy,
mean they've been sometimes gossip man.
That's why James spent a long time talking about taming the
tongue in church, because he knows the people can be a little
less than Christ's life, that some of the greatest divisions
have happened in churches. Most of the New Testament
letters are dealing with that exact thing.
So people can be the problem, right?
And we are people of Christ. And so how is the fruit of the
Spirit ruling in you as you abide?
Is there anybody that you need to reconcile with?
Is there anyone that you need to take a second time and kind of
go back and say, are we, are we good?
Is there anything between us? Don't let anyone go to the grave
without making one last attempt at loving and reconciling.
And let's be very honest and our families.
That is one of the hardest things to do.
But John 15 gives us a road map. Abide, abide, abide.
As we abide, Christ will lead us as we seek peace and peacemaking
and reconciliation. This is hard.
Don't do it alone. But these are the relationships
that we have that Lord has placed us in, and it is so
difficult. So is there an application here
where you need to take the next step?
Do it prayerfully, do it in abiding not in your own strength
at all. And then let me ask you another
question too, because bearing fruit is the goal is the, the
reality that we don't, you know, make ourselves all of a sudden
produce the fruit. It's it's in that relationship
that the fruit is produced. And as we're doing that, you ask
somebody that you know, ask someone that you trust will be
honest with you and say, hey, how am I doing with Galatians 5?
How am I doing with First Corinthians 13?
Am I? Am I Do you see chapter 13 of
First Corinthians 4 through 8 in my life?
Am I keeping record of wrongs? Do I need to rethink a few
things. How am I doing with joy?
How am I doing with peace? These are things that are
evidence in life and not to be guilting you just to go and and
see and ask the Lord show me or ask a friend to show me.
See if that fruit is in you working, showing you.
And then the final thing that I think this is something how much
I struggle with this is the reality is every single one of
us, you and me, we're all abiding in something, right?
It's just, are we abiding in the Lord or are we abiding in the
world? Are we abiding in worry and
anxiety? Are we buying?
Are we abiding in the things of this world that are weighing us
down? Because we're all abiding.
And I will be the first to tell you I'm not.
I'm abiding in fear and anxiety and worry about things, right?
I'm I, if I am not careful, I will slowly drift into that
abiding in anxiety. It happened so subtly, right?
But we're all abiding in something.
It's just what are we marinating in?
What are we meditating on? What is our heart folk focused
on that no one else can say? And we at Park Cities
Presbyterian Church are phenomenal actors and actresses.
We could win Academy Awards for our presentations here.
Like, everything's great and inside we're dying.
And So what are we abiding in? And just go before the Lord and
ask that question. Think about how this can inspire
us again to ground ourselves again in this reciprocal
relationship where the power is flowing through us, the SAP, the
nutrients are flowing through this us because we are branches
connected to the vine, the true vine.
And as a result of that, we can abide in Christ and receive his
love. You and I, we should ask, Lord,
help me to receive all of your love.
Do you receive it? Are we in a place where we put
ourselves to say, Lord, show me how much you love me again.
Remind me again, He knows what we're thinking.
And so let the Lord love you. Let the Lord show you again with
fresh ears and eyes. Yes, he does love me.
Let's pray. Father God, You are the great
High King, and we praise you for the mystery of the Trinity.
And how, how is it? How can we possibly fathom that
there are three and one Holy, holy, holy, that's the Lord God
Almighty. You have given us Your Word, and
Your word is a fire in US. And we ask, O Lord, that it
would stir us by the power of your Holy Spirit to love one
another, to do exactly what this chapter is calling us to do.
But, oh Lord, we do not want to do it on our own strength.
So will you empower me and all my brothers and sisters to
receive all of you so that we can love and give to others.
And we pray this in the name of the Father and the Son and the
Holy Spirit, Amen.