A Call to Abide

Abide Atl DNA Series  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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Series intended to promote Abide's DNA to Know, Grow, and Go.

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Transcript

Overview and Background

just came out of our Ephesians series called “In Him” that focused on being His Workmanship
we drank deeply in the gospel of God’s grace through Jesus and the practical outworking of that grace in how we related to each other as the church, as husbands and wives, raising children.
shifting to start a series to focus on our DNA. By DNA I mean the core of what it means to be the church yet unique in its character and quality. Our story as a church shaped us, sharpened us, and as this series will highlight, pruned us.
The next three weeks we will focus on an aspect of our DNA and what it means to know Christ, Grow in Christ, and Go in Christ
Today we will focus on an aspect of knowing Christ and what it means to Abide In Him.

Story of the Name: Abide

the church has been in the area for decades
in the last 4 years this church has undergone two major transitions that left people confused, hurt, angry but for a few there remained hope and a level of faith and endurance that was evident God was truly at work and would continue to see his work done in this area.
Honestly, this was not a church I felt called to when we initially planted
then I walked in the doors about two years ago and was convinced the Spirit was at work in the people here.
My wife and I stayed because we both believed that.
in the early days, as the transition team sat around retelling the story of how God was working we also told the story of how God called us to Himself.
Months later we started to talk about what our name might be and though we had several other options, Abide seemed to tell our story best and to represent how we wanted to display His name on the placard out front.
This message is not just about the name, Abide, but what it means for us now, you and me, to continue this story.

Introduction

Let’s start with the reading of God’s word to see where this story goes.
I’m using the ESV as it uses the word “Abide” instead of “Remain” as you’ll see in other translations. They mean the same thing but it obviously relates to our name!
John 15:1–8 ESV
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 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, 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 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 prove to be my disciples.
This passage in John’s letter is at the heart of Jesus’ farewell message to his followers. John spends a lot of time capturing this message to his disciples in preparing them for what’s to come - ultimately his “going away” but also the shocking reality of his betrayal and crucifixion.
To get a sense of the tone and timing a couple chapters earlier during the Lords supper, Judas gets up and walks out after being taken over by the evil spirit and Jesus tells him, “whatever you’re about to do, do quickly”. He’s about to be betrayed. He then begins to remind and comfort them that though he’s leaving another counselor, the Holy Spirit, is coming to be with them. He then predicts Peter’s denial.
So we have Two of his followers, his disciples, being highlighted as denying who he his.
Near the end of this time with the disciples he encourages them not to be afraid about him saying he’s leaving in John 14.27
John 14:27 ESV
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
and then in v. 31 right before the passage we just read, it cuts away sharply, “now get up and let’s leave this place”. A pretty dramatic closing of the scene.
The gospel writer John gives a clear picture that Jesus is reminding them is that He is the Messiah so believe, get excited, this is what you’ve been waiting for and all of history has been pointing to. But we need to move on from here because the story is NOT over yet and it requires us to move on from here.
Yet they are also clearly troubled and a little confused. Can you relate? In a place where you’re still asking questions, see reasons to be encouraged, want to be hopeful but yet still not totally sure, trying to grasp onto something tangible, to hear something that will make it all click.
That’s the heart of the question I wanted us to answer as we look at our own story, How do we remain (Abide) in our trust of Jesus in the midst of the unknown and difficulty, knowing that those around us who appear to be followers of Jesus may fall away?
that’s what we’re going to explore in this passage. To answer this question we’ll look at three areas
The Source of True Life
The Process of New Life
My Prayer for an Abiding Life

Point 1. The Source of True Life

Jesus begins this passage with his seventh and final “I Am” statement in the Gospel of John. • “I am the bread of life” (6:35). • “I am the light of the world” (8:12). • “I am the gate” (10:9). • “I am the good shepherd” (10:11). • “I am the resurrection and the life” (11:25). • “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (14:7).
what commentaries point to in John’s gospel account is that the emphasis is on Jesus as THE light, gate, life, and here THE true vine. In verse 1 he starts by saying I am the TRUE vine.
you don’t say things like “I’m the real deal” unless you think they’re are fakes out there. People that may look like, sound like, vines but are not.
But notice Jesus doesn’t just say he is the TRUE vine and then say, “abide in me”, He points out that there’s a gardener, the Father. There is someone tending to this garden, who has responsibility for this garden. As we see in Genesis, life started in the garden. John is now using that same language here to capture to full metaphor of Jesus as the True vine and us as the branches.
As Christians this is easy to overlook because we “know” this in our heads. Yeah, of course Jesus is the source of life, he is the truth. Jesus is the Son, God is the Father, never heard him called a gardner but yeah that makes sense I guess, and the Holy Spirit is the counselor that will come and remind us of the Word’s God spoke through Jesus.
Yep, got it. But John is pouring this truth out over and over again for a reason. There must be a reason.
John 1:1–5 ESV
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John, using a different metaphor here of “light” goes ALL the way back to the beginning, the beginning of ALL things to say, ALL things were made through him. He is the source of ALL the life you see around you.
So why didn’t John keep the same metaphor of light?
Commentators point out that this reference to the vine and gardener was not just for a word picture. His listeners likely would have known the reference of Israel being called the True Vine.
In Isaiah 5 there’s a story of a vineyard being planted with love and care but not yielding good grapes. This was a comparison to Israel. Jesus is reminding us that if you want to please the Father it doesn’t come through Israel, it’s not a cultural thing, you please the Father through Me.
And again, we may say, sure I understand that but again John in the very beginning is point out that though all this is plain to us, the world didn’t recognize him.
John 1:10–13 (ESV)
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
So John is setting some things up for us about what would resonate with his listeners. There are some of you who want to believe this, believe it but are a little scared about the implications, and some who are outright confused, and there may be those who look like followers doing and saying all the right things but will fall away.
The metaphor Jesus gives us to illustrate True disciples and those who will fall away are BRANCHES.
John 15.4 “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch..
John 15.5 “I am the vine; you are the branches.
Which means YOU, my disciples are branches. This is a picture of Union with Christ. Vine and Branch becoming one. You don’t look at tree and say wow, look at all those pretty branches. We see them as ONE.
Which now begs the question, how do I know I am abiding to the True Vine, truly a disciple?
We are going to look at 3 peices of evidience, one of those peices come directly from this passage but need to look to another of John’s letter, and then Paul for a bit more detail around this concept of being “in Christ”.

Am I a True Disciple - Keeping His Word

1 john 2.5-6 “but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
So we see if you keep his word, follow his word God is working in you, perfecting you, which means you will “walk”, live your life day by day in a way that says “Jesus is IN HIM”.

Am I a True Disciple - Bearing Fruit

Coming back directly to our passage, we see that being “in Him” you will bear fruit.
John 15.4-5 “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear 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 bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
for the purposes of this passage, I want to share two examples of fruit - one is foundational and the other progressive.
D. Martin Lloyd Jones in his book Life In God says
The very fact that a man believes is proof he has been born again; it is the first fruit that is manifested in the life of one who has been born of God.
Life in God, 17
the second speaks to the progressive nature of fruit-bearing. You don’t just wake up after surrendering a life to Jesus and see a flourishing garden - which we will get to in the second point.
Tim Keller uses the example that Fruit grows in both symmetry and progressively. It’s not all at once, with one side of the apple growing and then the other. It happens together and over time.
This also means that when we speak of the fruit of the spirit, it is not the fruits, plural but singular. Patience, kindness, and love for one another will occur together over time. Do we see this in our life over time? For some, it may seem pretty straightforward forward and they can say, yes, by God’s grace I see this and others have noticed the growth in me.
For others, it may be more difficult.
Years I wrestled with a confidence in my salvation because of a deep pattern of sin that made me feel like my salvation was on this ice. Am I bearing fruit, is this what fruit looks like? Was I really a true disciple, was Jesus really “In Me”? More than once, I was reminded by pastors who watched over me and friends that to look for fruit can sometimes feel “fruitless” and illusive.
In the moment, it was evidence of faithfulness to God’s word, to submit to his will for my life, and perservence TO ABIDE, TO REMAIN, to find rest at the feet of Jesus that was my greatest encouragement.

Am I a True Disciple - Perseverance

which relates to the final piece of evidence, perseverance.
I’ll touch more on this in the next point but it’s important to make this TIME + SITUATION connection of our union with Christ.
Colossians 1.23 “if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven...”
It’s easy to follow Jesus when everyone around you shares the same perspective, you don’t have many physical or financial needs. In essence when life lines up exactly as you envisioned, whatever your vision of the good life is, hey this Christianity thing is ok.
But when difficulty strikes at the heart of your identity, your vision of the good life, where does your hope lie now?
If you persevere, stable and steadfast, that’s a good sign that Christ is In You.
Charles Spurgeon once said, The saints prove their conversion by their perseverance, and that perseverance comes from a continual supply of divine grace to their souls. The Candle, Volume 27, Sermon #1594 - Matthew 5:15, 16
That supply comes from the Vine, the True vine. Every other source of “life” will fade. Our health will fade, our careers will falter or shift, our families or spouse will disappoint, our ministries may fail. The Vine, that is the source of our motivation and power and fulfill v.8 - to prove to be Jesus’ disciples.
This is where I see a lot of Christians, myself included at times, confusing Abide with an experience or feeling.
Worship, prayer, reading our Bible, going for walks to talk with God are indeed good disciplines but that is not what is meant here by Abide. Those days you wake up and say, Lord I did NOT sign up for this, Abide means you remain. It’s not about chasing the “feeling” of being secure, it’s remembering He is IN YOU and You In HIM.
In Summary, to Abide reflects a state, a spiritual reality with Jesus as the source.
And this spiritual reality is where we also have the reminder that the Father who planted with love and care, will prune.
Which leads us to our second point, the Process of New Life.

Point 2. The Process of New Life

John 15.2 “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.”
Of all the metaphors John records in the beginning: light, the way, the gate, the good shepherd, it’s the agricultural one, gardening that reminds us in v. 5, “we can do nothing without him”. We need a gardener, someone tending to us to prune us.

Pruning to Take Away

And here’s the rub. One purpose of pruning requires cutting away what is useless, what is preventing the plant or tree from flourishing.
What does this mean that he “takes away” a branch that doesn’t bear fruit?
1 John 2.19 “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
this gives us a picture of how true faith is revealed through a “falling away” of those who did not have a true saving faith. Judas was our example earlier when he ran out of the room. He literally and spiritually made it plain that he was not a true disciple.
We will have people in this church, in our life, where this happens so there’s a healthy warning hear about not being wooed by the “appearance” of being a follower of Jesus.
Showing up to all the right activities, hanging with the right people, reading the right books.
Fruit doesn’t grow on a branch that is BY a tree, AROUND a vine. It grows when it Abides, Remains in the source of life.
This is the really hard stuff in life.
Just this week was talking with a friend about haveing New life with old friends sometimes leaves you without no friends, or drastically changes the relationship.
When this happens in the church it hurts, it really hurts because though we know it CAN happen when it happens to people we love and trust, who know our kids, help us raise our kids, it hurts. It cuts deep.

Pruning to Produce More Fruit

But we also see the other purpose of pruning, to cut back for MORE GROWTH
John 15.2 “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.”
To understand the pruning process I think it’s helpful to go back to our understanding of Abiding. To “receive” and “accept” and “walk” with Jesus as our only source of life, comfort, and hope. John 1.12
John 1:12 ESV
But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
John 10.28 “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
this should give us confidence that God is not seeking to catch us on a bad day. For those that received him and believe, He is for us, with us, that we may prove to be his disciples.
As pastor and theologian John Stott once said, “the painful pruning knife is in safe hands”. In order for us to grow and produce MORE fruit, the vine dresser, the Gardener must cut away. There will be pain in the process.
It’s one of the reasons you’ll hear Christians often refer to life in seasons. In seasons, God reveals our sin and the things that in getting in the way of producing fruit. “God seems to be teaching me how to have more patience through this difficult relationship”, or “God is revealing that I strive to please my peers and boss at work more than pleasing the Lord by setting better boundaries between work and home”.
Regardless of the season, a plant always needs nourishment. The vine and branch metaphor reminds us of our daily need for nourishment, to receive from Jesus, and to walk with Jesus. You can’t prune a dead plant. Dead plants get thrown away.
US Army days story where plant above my head never got tended to.
Pruning then in this case proves we are his disciples!
Gary Burge, an author and seminary professor sums up this point masterfully.
Vine dressers both trim branches so that they will produce more fruit and cut away dead branches that have no life in them. In each case the assumption is that fruit-bearing is the test of life-giving attachment to the vine.
Gary M. Burge

Prayer for an Abiding Life

I opened this passage by asking the question, how do we Abide with Jesus and remain resilient in the midst of our own fears, the unknown, difficulties and afflictions? Jesus was giving these words to his disciples as a comfort, to give them a picture of their Union with Him moments before he would be betrayed and crucified and taken up.
That was our story two years ago as a community looking for the comfort in the midst of a lot of questions. Which is why it became our banner so to speak, that we could wave to remind each other to Abide. Though we don’t know where the labor will come from, Abide and pray with God’s Word planted in your hearts. Though grace and patience feel far from us at times, Abide and be pruned to show your own need for mercy. Though I’m at a loss for words and weary, Abide and come to dwell beneath the shadow of the garden God is tending.
To Abide is to trust that Jesus is THE Messiah, not a messiah, a possible option, a noteworthy teacher, but THE Messiah.
John 20.31 gives us what some commentators believe is the main theme of the Gospel of John, “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have LIFE in his name.
An Abiding Life is a Perservering Life despite the pruning pains at the hands of a loving Gardener, when the money disappears, the laborers betray you, when your health fails, your job doesn’t give you the flexibility you need to care for your neighbor.
An Abiding life is a Fruit-filled life that depends on moment by moment nourishment from the True Vine. Filled with the meditations of His Word, with roots planted deeply, ready for any season, any storm, drought, or flood.
That is my prayer for us as a church. That we would proclaim this when we greet someone at the door, welcome someone into our home, sing a worship song, go on a missions trip, teach our kids in Hello World, or help our neighbor navigate a divorce.
That my prayer for us, for me.

Conclusion

Believe the True Vine

Believe Jesus as the only True Savior of the world, the great I AM
It’s not a little Jesus and me, or a little Jesus and the right discipleship program, or the right political system
Receive from Jesus the words of life, look to Him alone as your righteousness, so your good works would prove you belong to Him. That the world would then look to you, THE BRANCH, and see the True Vine. They would see Christ IN YOU, and YOU IN HIM.
And know that in every season, winter or spring, the pruning knife is in loving hands.
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