I Am the True Vine (2)
Notes
Transcript
I AM: The True Vine
John 15:1-8
Series Slide
Good morning and welcome to worship everyone. What an amazing day, baptisms and blessings, and celebrating our college worshiping with our Flute Choir! It is a good day to be in the house of the Lord!
We are wrapping up our I Am series. Just one more week after this week as we talk about Yahweh, Ego Eime, I Am. If you are just catching up, we have been looking at these passages where Jesus has told us that he is God in the Flesh, he is I Am, the eternal name of God. Along with that declaration, Jesus proclaimed the character of God as he said, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Living Water, I Am the Door, I am the Bread of Life, I Am the Resurrection and the Life, and next week, we will see that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life… but today, we are looking at Jesus claim: I Am the True Vine.
Sermon Slide
Turn with me to John 15. If you’ve studied this before, then you know that this is all part of the narrative of the Passover meal, and Jesus is teaching and preparing the disciples for his death, burial, and resurrection. Jesus has reminded them that he is going away, but he will come back, that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, that he will send a comforter, the Holy Spirit, to them. Now he is going to tell them of the importance of abiding. You’ve already heard the longer passage, so I’m just going to focus on the main verse for us today.
John 15:5
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.
<Prayer>
Unpruned Grape Vine
Grape vines have to be pruned to be healthy. They do survive in the wild. Here in Texas we have what they call Mustang Grapes and Muscadine Grapes. They are wild grapes native to this region. As they grow wild, they do produce grapes. They are hardy and strong… they were actually grafted into some of the old vines of France and California to produce a hardier vine, impacting the vineyards of California and France.
So, yes, the wild grapes are good; but, when you begin to prune them, when you reduce the amount of branches coming off the vine and support the branches, you have grape vines that produce much more.
Pruned Vines
What you are seeing are the grape vines I grew in Brownwood at the parsonage… I’m truly a novice… but, these vines in this picture were a year younger than the unpruned vines along the fence in the previous picture and yet they produced three times the number of grape bunches!
Just so you know, we didn’t leave all our grapes behind.
Corsicana Grape Vine
Here is the one remaining grapevine that made the move. And, it’s producing grapes!
As I think about the care of these grapevines, I imagine Jesus looking at one of the cups of wine they are having at this meal, thinking about all the work to bring it to them… from then vineyard, to the press, and on through the fermentation process, all to make that one cup of wine… as he looks at that cup he lifts it and says, I am the True Vine. The various cups of Wine represented so much in the Passover Meal, and each one is the result of the work of the vineyard and the vine gardener.
Sermon Slide
But by claiming to be the True Vine, Jesus is calling their minds back to the Scriptures of Isaiah and other parts of what we call the Old Testament, where Israel is called the Vineyard of God… and later that God would produce a new vine for a new time.
It was a familiar picture.
But Jesus is changing their understanding.
He is saying that the New Israel is the spiritual fulfillment of God’s promise.
He is telling them that one is connected to the true vine through Jesus, rather than through Abraham. In other words, Abraham and the people of Israel are one branch, but you and I, the gentiles, are another branch that is connected to the vine… We are abiding in Jesus!
I want to focus this morning on what it means to “abide” in Jesus. One of the great challenges to spiritual life is the irony of time-conscious human beings trying to relate to a timeless God. We live under the tyranny of the clock; yet God inhabits eternity.
Psalm 46:10 says “they that wait upon the Lord…” But we’re terrible at waiting, mainly because it takes so much time! For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. Rather, it’s that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a watered-down, mediocre version of it.
To grow grapes takes time and patience. It takes connection. It takes abiding. Here, I have a branch from one of the vines. On it, you see these little baby grapes. Yes, they are attached to the branch, but the branch is no longer attached, it is no longer abiding in the vine. It can’t draw from the vine, it’s been cut off, it’s been pruned. These grapes will not grow. They will not produce.
Because they are not abiding in the vine, they will never be made into jelly, or wine, or juice.
They are dead apart from the vine.
I doubt any of us would intentionally ever sever ourselves from God. But, we will become so busy, so hurried, that we don’t grow. So spread that we are like the unpruned vine growing in every direction without the fruit that we could have.
In John Ortberg’s book, “The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People,” he talks about our modern-day “Hurry Sickness”. We are always in such a hurry!
Think about what we do… We buy 3 in one wash, so we don’t have to switch from soap to shampoo and then conditioner. Oooo we save a lot of time there don’t we.
We go eat at McDonalds… not because it’s good, but because it’s fast… and sitting down in the restaurant takes too much time, so they developed the drive-thru to help us with our hurried life.
One definition of this illness we are all living with by Dr. Meyer Friedman, who actually coined the term says: Hurry-Sickness is “a continuous struggle…to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time, frequently in the face of opposition, real or imagined, from other persons.”
Any time we hear about a new disease, we want to know if we have it, so here are the Symptoms of the Disease:
1. Constantly speeding up daily activities:
- reading, talking, eating, etc. We skim an article instead of read it, we swallow our food whole… you get the point.
- Here’s another one, I did this a HEB a few days ago… Have you ever picked your line based on the length, then counted the people in the grocery line—and keep track of the place where you would have been in the other line?
If you beat them, you won! If they beat you, you feel depressed for the rest of the day.
- Here’s another one, I will set my GPS on my truck when I travel, not because I need to know where I am going, but to see if I can beat the Estimated Time of Arrival it tells me…
- You do realize that the modern computer is the result of this symptom of the illness… The computer was created to allow us to get more done, faster, so we could have more free time… but instead, we’ve filled up the extra time with more work… that we speed up
2. Multi-tasking.
- We used to call this “doing more than one thing at the same time,” but that takes too long to say, so we call it multi-tasking
- We do it best in the car. Hurry-sick people can drive, eat, shave, put on make-up, drink coffee, listen to the radio, talk on the phone, and make hand gestures—all at the same time!
- I see it in myself… I multitask all the time. I will be working out, and listing to my Bible. I’ll be taking a shower, but listening to my morning devotional or a podcast… which I listen to at 1.5 speed…
So, we speed things up, we multi-task, and another symptom is
3. Superficiality.
- Depth can only come slowly—in relationships, conversations, and thoughts.
- But we have traded wisdom for information; depth for breadth.
- We have created a culture that is a mile wide and an inch deep… and that has transferred over to our faith life as well. So many of us live our life of faith on the surface, never going deep into what God has for us.
4. An inability to love.
- Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible.
- Love always takes time, and time is the one thing hurried people don’t have.
- This is why hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life—it is impossible to be aware of the Father’s love when you are always in a hurry.
But, just like an illness, there is a treatment. Like with a poison that robs us of life, there is an antidote…
The cure for the disease: Abiding in Jesus.
John 15:5
“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.
There is a picture of this in Luke 10. It’s a familiar passage for some; it’s the story of Mary and Martha… It’s depicted in the window above the Annex. You know the story, Jesus has come to visit his friends in Bethany, pre-dead and resurrected Lazarus is there, Martha’s in the kitchen preparing for their guest, and Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to him teach.
Martha’s had enough. There she is, slaving away in the kitchen preparing this meal for Jesus and the Disciples, and Mary’s doing nothing. The nerve of her… doesn’t Mary know what it takes to prepare a meal and serve this many people? So, Martha tells Jesus… you catch that, she tells Jesus what needs to be done.
That’s often what hurry-sick people do… We have a drive-by prayer and tell Jesus what needs to be done.
But, what is Jesus’ reply to Martha?
Luke 10:42
But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
We see, and we have two different ideas of fruitfulness in this story and in our life.
The fruitfulness that happens when we work and produce an outcome. This is the one we like to think we have control over. “Look, I did this and the outcome was that! Look at what I did!”
Then there is…
The fruitfulness of abiding in Christ and letting Him do the work through us. The result of that fruitfulness is “more than we could ever ask or imagine.”
Isn’t it interesting that Mary was sitting at Jesus feet like a child sitting around a teacher in class listening to a story… Wasn’t it Jesus that said, “Unless you become like little children, you can not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Wasn’t it Jesus who said, “Let the little children come to me.”
Mary was in the posture of abiding.
Martha was in the posture of producing. She was trying to do the work of pleasing Jesus, and she thought others should be too, but Jesus was reminding them that he was the focus. He was the one that does the work.
So, I want to wrap this sermon up with 4 simple steps to remain in Jesus.
And as we do, We need to commend Martha about something.
She wasn’t all bad.
She knew that there was work to be done, but she had lost the focus of why she was doing the work.
There are things we do, there is work we do, that help us abide in Christ.
But the focus can’t be the work; it always has to be Jesus. Jesus is the focus, Amen…
So, 4 steps to remain in Jesus.
And, I bet you already know them.
Scripture. Read some every day. How are you doing on your Bible in a Year plan… You should be well on your way. I am through all the Gospels and starting over, I’ve finished Genesis and Exodus, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and starting on Leviticus. But, that reading is often more for information. In addition to that we need to read for formation.
We need to know the difference between reading for information and reading for formation.
Informational reading covers as much as possible
Formational reading covers what is needed, and focuses on depth, not quantity; perhaps only one word.
Informational reading has a goal of mastering the text (content and meaning)
Formational reading has a goal of being masteredby the text.
Informational reading treats the text as an object
Formational reading sees ourselves as the object of the text.
Informational reading reads analytically
Formational reading reads receptively.
Informational reading seeks to solve problems
Formational reading seeks to enter into the mystery of God.
So, the first antidote to the hurry-sick life is Scripture, next is worship….
Worship. In Worship, The Focus is the Focus. We were made to worship, and we will worship something… a sports team, an idol like our Cell Phone or Social Media, our children or grandchildren, some famous person… the list goes on… We will worship, and we need to develop a habit of gathering regularly for worship with God’s people.
Come prepared to encounter the living God, not just to evaluate and critique and compare. Remember, we’re here like a group of spiritual kindergartners, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He really is present with us by his Spirit. Learn to “attend to him” like Mary did, “Abide in him.”
Fellowship. The importance of small groups. Wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he really is there with them. More importantly, he is present in the faces and lives of the people we gather with. We encounter Christ in each other. Because the church is the body of Christ, each gathering of believers offers a whisper of his presence and the lingering aroma of his fragrance.
You are an important part of the body, and when you aren’t here, you are missed.
Finally,
Prayer. Prayer at fixed times. (Morning or Evening, etc.) Also, prayer throughout the day. Paul wrote, “Pray without ceasing…” (1 Thess. 5:17)
Prayer centers us on God.
Prayer connects us to God.
Prayer reminds us to pause, to breathe, to know that Jesus is still on the Throne.
We live in a busy time… but it’s always been that way. Yes, technology has changed how busy we are, but that’s been the case forever as well.
Think about how the invention of metal in the Iron Age changed society.
Think about the invention of the wheel and how that impacted productivity.
As it says in Ecclesiastes, there is nothing new under the sun; we just like to think that we are special and different.
Sermon Slide
But, for all times the answer has been the same. Remain in God. Or as Jesus said, “Abide in Me.”
We are invited to ABIDE forever with the great I AM. The King of kings and Lord of lords, the Alpha and Omega, the Prince of peace, the Messiah… Immanuel.
I can think of no better person to abide with than Jesus, Amen…
Let’s pray together.
