2023-01-29 Remain, Still, Again

We live in an electronic world. Now a digitally electronic world. For the vast majority of earth’s history, people lived simple lives. If you wanted to warm up your food, you built a fire and heated it up. If the temperature dropped and you wanted to keep warm at night, you built a fire and warmed up the place you were living. If you wanted light in the dark, you trimmed your lamp, made sure there was oil, lit it and you had light, or later, lit your candles. If you wanted power, you used your muscles, the muscles of an animal or the power of falling water or blowing wind.

Then, electricity was invented. All our heat, all our light and just about everything else we do either comes from electricity or is controlled by electrical signals. Everything. Furnaces, clocks, power tools, vehicles, every computerized gadget, fridges, freezers, stoves, all communication, almost all entertainment, etc., etc. If the power would go out permanently, in winter we would freeze. Except for Dave, he has a wood stove.

In some way or another, all our gadgets and tools have to remain connected to the power grid or they are powerless and useless. Electric saws don’t cut so well manually. How many of you would be able to do your work without electricity? Anyone?

Simply put, we have to remain connected to the grid or our society would grind to a halt. Apart from electricity, we have nothing. You could say that with electricity, we have life as we know it, without it, we’re back in the dark ages.

Jesus said something very similar to his disciples the night before he died. He said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me, you can do nothing.”

Jesus didn’t say, “apart from me you’ll be somewhat ineffective”, or “apart from me you’ll be at 40% instead of 100%.” He was unequivocal. “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Zilch. Nuscht, le rien. (luh reeaun) Nothing.

The Teachings of John 15:1-17

What does Jesus mean? Is he saying that all our personal efforts have no value?

John 15:1-17 has all kinds of truths in it. Thanks, Logan, for reading it before. Some repeated, some said once. John’s writing style is a circular style, where he cycles in and out of three or four ideas. I spoke on this passage on May 17, 2020, when we studied the I Am sayings of Jesus in John. That was the beginning of Covid when everything was online.

Here’s a summary of the various teachings in this passage.

Jesus is the true vine –The previous three times in the FT that God used the imagery of the vine, Psalm 80:8-19, Isaiah 5:1-7 and Jeremiah 2:21, the vine is considered to be God’s people, Israel. Each time God has looked for good fruit and found only bad fruit, and God promises to destroy it. In Psalm 80, God promised to send “a son of man” to revive his people. Jesus is the true Israel; he’s the fulfillment of what God was looking for in a people.

Jesus has cleansed the disciples by his word, his teaching.

The Father is the gardener. God the Father is the one that tends the vine.

He is wanting the vine to produce fruit, so

he cares for it, lifting up branches that are down in the dirt and tying them up, and,

in the off season he prunes the vine so that it’s energy will go into fruit instead of a bunch of leafy growth.

Pruned branches that don’t produce fruit are destroyed.

If the branches produce fruit, God gets the glory. It’s his vine.

The disciples are the branches.

The goal of branches is to bear fruit that will last. Nothing else. There is no other goal. What the fruit is, isn’t defined here.

The branches can only produce fruit if they remain connected to Jesus and Jesus remains connected to them.

The branches are to remain in Jesus’ love. This is done by obeying Jesus’ commands.

His commands are to love each other as Jesus loved them.

If they do, Jesus will call them friends.

They will have joy.

Whatever they ask in Jesus’ name will be done for them. This is stated twice.

The branches, his disciples, have been chosen by Jesus.

As you can see, there is a lot here. All kinds of things to reflect on and think about. Much could be said about the fruit, what it is, etc. Much could be said about the Father and his desires and care for us.

Remaining in the Vine

Today I want to zero in on one concept and one only. Remaining in the vine. Older English translations used the word ‘abide’. Abide means, remain, continue, stay.

Jesus’ illustration is at once simple and profound. Vineyards are a huge part of the economy and culture of the Mediterranean world. Here’s a picture of vineyards somewhere between Philadelphia and Laodicea in Turkey. Most of the drive was through vineyard country. (blank)

The simple truth about grapes is that if a branch remains connected to the vine, it can produce fruit. If it doesn’t stay connected, it doesn’t produce fruit. Every year after the leaves have fallen off our grape vines, I prune it. Here’s a wreath made of grape branches that I’ve pruned off. (Hold up wreath) At one time they were full of leaves and had many bunches of fruit on them. Not anymore. Now they’re dried up. They will never produce fruit again. Just so you know, dried grape branches burn very quickly and very hot.

Jesus said, unless you remain in me and I remain in you, you will bear no fruit. Why is that? And what does it mean to remain in Jesus?

Before I get to talking about why we can’t produce fruit apart from Jesus I need to first talk about the nature of Jesus the vine.

Jesus is the very source of life itself. At the very beginning of the Good news according to John, John wrote this, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of mankind.” John 1:1,2 (blank)

Jesus isn’t just the source of fruit bearing, he’s the source of life itself. The same is true for a vine and its branches. The branches are created from out of the vine and their life is wrapped up with the vine. Without the vine, they have no life and die. This is of course true physically with us and Jesus. God made us, we were “knit together in our mother’s wombs” (Psalm 139:13) by God himself. But as important a truth as our physical life coming from Jesus is, we are much more than physical creatures. We are also spiritual creatures. We were created in the image of God. The spiritual aspect of us finds its life in Jesus. When we come to faith in him, we become alive. If we disconnect from Jesus, we will spiritually shrivel up and die. As I wrote this my stomach was growling. It was aching. I was fasting at the time and my stomach was yelling at me to eat something, to provide nourishment for my body. Just as our bodies need food to live, we need Jesus to live. Just as we need to remain connected in some way to the electrical grid to live, we need to remain connected to Jesus to live. There is no real life apart from him. Apart from him, there is only death.

It is because life itself is found in Jesus that we can only produce fruit that will last in Jesus. That line in v16 helps us to understand. There are times when it seems to me that my efforts make a difference. The things I do make a difference. Since every person on earth is made in the image of God, there is a spark of the divine in all of us and in that sense, all people can bear some fruit. But the question is, will it last or will it rot and decay. Jesus is saying that if we remain connected to him, the fruit of our lives will be abundant and it will last. It will last for eternity and its value will be outsized.

What does remaining connected to Jesus look like?

There are two aspects to it that I want to talk about.

The first has to do with how we live. Three Sundays ago, I spoke on Knowing God through Loving Other People. Last Sunday I spoke about knowing God Through Self-sacrifice. Let’s turn back to John 15. This time vv10-14. (read) (blank) How do we remain connected to Jesus? Love one another as he did, Self-sacrificially. What does this look like? (read Matthew 25:34-36) (blank) It’s both simple and incredibly difficult. It doesn’t have to look like a big program with shiny bells and whistles. You know what the early church program looked like? Individual people like Dorcas in Joppa making clothes for poor people and everyday Christians feeding their neighbours. The only structure they ever gave to it was when they chose deacons for the food distribution. Vineyards often don’t look like much, especially up close. (show picture of vineyard in Turkey) But, these sad looking vines produce this. (show two pictures of grapes) Your love might be simple, but the result is eternal. Simply put, use your gifts and resources to love people in the name of Jesus. (blank)

The second aspect of remaining connected is how you connect directly with Jesus. I want to read a little to you from this small book called the Secret of the Vine. In the chapter called More of God, More With God, the author, Bruce Wilkinson, talks about having a thriving ministry but feeling burnt out and lifeless. He reached out a friend who invited him over to talk about it.

“’Tell me your whole life story,’ he said, ‘and don’t hurry.’ I talked for at least an hour. When my account came to two years before the present, George stopped me, ‘Let me finish your life story,’ he said.

‘But how can you?’ I asked. ‘You don’t even know what has happened!’

‘But I know why you’re hear,’ he said. I’ve studied over five hundred Christian leaders’ lives—biblical examples, historical figures, and contemporary people, some of who you know. And, Bruce, you’re right on schedule.’

‘On schedule for what?’ I asked. George definitely had my attention.

Standing in front of me, he held up his hands, palms facing me. ‘These are your two sources of fulfillment. My right hand stands for your relationship with God, my left for your competence in ministry,’ he said. ‘When you first began to serve the Lord, your relationship was young and vibrant. It had to be because your competence was weak.’ He moves his right hand up so that it was higher than his left.

He continued. ‘But over time your competence increased.’ He moved both hands to a side-by-side position. ‘At this stage, the fulfillment you experienced from your competence approximately equaled the fulfillment you experienced from your relationship with the Lord.’ George’s left hand drifted upward, above his right hand. ‘Pretty soon, your competence became apparent to all. You had never been more productive for God. But your walk with Him began to suffer. Your satisfaction dropped.’ He paused. ‘Bruce, this is where you are now.’

I was in the stage, he said, when most throw even more energy into their work, hoping to recapture their former fulfillment. But it doesn’t work for long. Some drift into affairs, leave the ministry, retreat from their lifelong commitments. ‘Bruce,’ he said, ‘the Lord is saying, ‘Put relationship with Me first’—that it’s time to switch hands again. If you do, you’ll find the joy that you’re missing now, and so much more.’

Does this resonate with you? Where is your fulfillment coming from? Your work? Your relationships with people? The people you minister to? Your hobbies? Do you get any fulfillment from your relationship with Jesus? The words of Jesus in Revelation 2:1-5 come to mind. (read) (blank)

In the next chapter of Wilkinson’s book, he says this,

“When I arrived home from my meeting with George, I made three simple commitments to the Lord for the next year.

I would: get up at 5 a.m. every day to read my Bible;

write a full page in a daily spiritual journal;

learn to pray and seek Him until I found Him.

I still remember the first line of my first spiritual journal: ‘Dear God, I don’t know what to say to You.’ Day after day I would look at what I had written. On every page I saw the real reason my busy Christian life now left such a bland taste in my mouth—I’d become an expert at serving God but somehow remained a novice at being his friend.

But I stayed with it. By the middle of the second month, things started to shift. It was as if a great Presence walked into my room in those early morning hours and sat down near me. My rambling journal entries gradually became personal confessions to the Listener. His passion for me, His purposes for my life—not just for the idea of my life, but for that particular day, hour, and minute—began to rise up from the pages of my Bible.

That was more than fifteen years ago. The pleasures of abiding—and the extraordinary benefits—have redefined the scope of and impact of God’s work through me. I see fruit everywhere I turn. Yet not even one grape is a result of working harder.”

Is this what you’re longing for? There is only one way I can have a strong relationship with my wife Corrina. In the middle of all the craziness and busyness of our lives, I have to spend time with her. I have to remain connected to her. The same is true with God. There is only one way we can stay connected to him. There are no shortcuts. If we don’t spend time with him, we will drift away and our activities will turn to dust and our fruit will rot. Eventually, we’ll dry up and be picked up and tossed out.

(Interview of Pete Giesbrecht)

Pray.

Benediction: 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 13

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