Cling to Christ

Intro:

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YVONNE story start - CARED for PEOPLE, fruitful branch

John’s context for the Upper Room, imminent tragedy, etc

There are four accounts of the life of Jesus written by his close friends and their associates, which we call Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

They have four different perspectives, and include different kinds of details and emphases, but all four tell us that Jesus foretold his followers that he would be unjustly put to death, and raised on the third day, all in fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures. All four Gospels tell us that none of his friends understood what he meant until after the events took place.

And all four Gospels tell us about how Jesus spent the last night before his death. He gathered his closest friends, whom we call disciples, for a shared meal and the most striking conversation they’d ever had.

It started with Jesus washing their feet as a symbol of His cleansing them from their sins and alienation from God. He warned them that one of them would betray him to those who hated him. And he warned one of his closest friends, Peter, that Peter would deny his friendship with Jesus three times before the end of the night.

And then, Jesus gives the disciples - and us - something incredibly precious. He gave them a meal called the Lord’s Supper, to remember and celebrate how Jesus’s body, broken on the Cross, heals our broken relationship with the God who made us.

In fact, the whole reason for Jesus’ ministry, for the stories He told, and the signs and wonders He performed, the reason for all His teachings from start to finish, the reason He came down from heaven and was born of the Virgin Mary, and the reason He died on the cross, and the reason He was raised on the third day, was because in Jesus, God was reconciling the world to Himself.

In these chapters of John’s Gospel, Jesus unpacks these profound, beautiful, world-transforming truths. And he does so using profound, beautiful, life-transforming words. How does God reconcile the world to Himself through Jesus? How does Jesus take a broken world and heal it by being broken in its place?

How, to use the themes of , does Jesus give true, fruitful life and comfort, even in the midst of sorrow or trouble? These are the kinds of things we discover here in John’s Gospel.

Abide in me

Yvonne’s life as a fruitful branch

As we celebrate Yvonne’s life today, these words of Jesus help by giving us two things: Comfort, and a Call, and we’ll find both of them in this word that Jesus repeats several times in this chapter: “Abide.”

CPS: Cling to Christ for dear life

Q:

I. Comfort: Those who cling to Christ receive true life from the true vine

As we mourn, comfort from this truth & its proof in Yvonne’s life

Promise of much fruit (despite trouble)

Let’s begin with a word of comfort. Those who cling to Christ receive true life from the true vine. <<READ 1-5>>

Here in verses 1-5, we see a wonderful, organic picture of the truly fruitful life. He starts and ends with an I AM statement.

Together declaring that in him, all God’s promises in the Old Testament that He would send a Messiah, a Savior, a Christ, to rescue his people from their sin & death, fulfilled in Jesus

- Jesus declaring that He is God, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the source of life and life itself.

- Jesus declaring that He is God, the one who made the heavens and the earth, the source of life and life itself.

He says “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” and in verse 5 he says, “I am the vine, you are the branches.”

The promise Jesus lays out in these verses is that He freely provides the only source of true life. The branches only produce fruit if they’re receiving nourishment from the true vine. But every branch that belongs in the vine gets tended to, pruned, with a predictable result: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.”

From the rest of the chapter, we learn that the fruit he’s talking about are the results of a life shaped by a vibrant connection to Jesus. They’re prayers that God answers because they reflect Jesus’s own words, offered in His Name; and they’re joyful obedience to Christ’s command to love others in the way He has loved us, and this is fruit that abides. It lasts.

is the joyful obedience to

We can see the truth of these words of Jesus in the life of Yvonne. This is the kind of fruit she bore. “Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.”

These are words of comfort for you today, because you can consider Yvonne and know that God fulfilled his promises to her.

Every story I’ve heard from Susan and Eric, and Earl, and their friends, points to a common thread about Yvonne: She profoundly, sacrificially, cared about people. She aimed to serve like Christ served. Greatness in God’s kingdom is measured by loving the way Jesus did. And Yvonne’s heart was set on seeing things the way Jesus did.

Let’s begin with

In every story I’ve heard from Yvonne’s children, and their friends, and from Earl, there’s a common thread that seems to shine through in every one. Yvonne Carlson Young cared about people. And her care for others wasn’t self-congratulating, she didn’t ask for the spotlight. But she cared about people. It wasn’t just a matter of personality, either. She aimed to serve like Christ served. When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he then told them to do the same. Greatness in God’s kingdom is measured by loving the way Jesus did. And Yvonne’s heart was set on seeing things the way Jesus did.

These are things that we cannot do on our own. You can’t manufacture godliness. It must be the fruit of belonging to the Vine.

Yvonne received true life from the true vine because she clung to Christ. And she bore much fruit. And now, she is not less connected to the Vine, but more. She is now in the presence of her Savior, restored, awaiting the day when He returns to reign over the New Heavens and the New Earth.

She received true life from the true vine because she clung to Christ. And she bore much fruit. And now, she is not less connected to the Vine, but more. She is now in the presence of her Savior, restored, awaiting the day when He returns to reign over the New Heavens and the New Earth.

And the same promises, with the same comfort, are offered to you: All who cling to Christ receive true life from Him, the true vine.

And this brings us my second point, to the CALL of this text.

Look at verses 3-5 with me again:

These are words of comfort Jesus spoke to his disciples in anticipation of His arrest and execution.

Look at verses 3-5 with me again:

John 15:3–5 ESV

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.

In verses 3-5, Jesus tells his disciples that His word - that is, the message of God reconciling the world to himself through Jesus’s death and resurrection - is what makes them “clean” or pruned, so they can bear fruit. So, He says, “abide in me.” Cling to Him.

As we consider how God kept this promise to

These are words of comfort Jesus spoke to his disciples in anticipation of His arrest and execution. Even in the midst of

There is comfort in these words because we see that God kept His promise to Yvonne, and He will keep His promise to all who cling to Jesus by faith.

Look in verse 1. Jesus says

For Jesus, a fruitful life is one that bears evidence of belonging to Him. Later in this chapter, in verses 7 and 16, He says that someone who abides in Him will bear fruit in the form of prayers to God that reflect Christ and His Mission, and those prayers will be answered.

That’s not all He means by fruit, though. Another type of fruit that we see explained in verses 7-17 is obedience to Christ’s command and commission to love the way Jesus has shown His love through His substitutionary death on the Cross.

Here in , we have a great cause for comfort as we consider Yvonne’s life, because we see exactly this kind of fruitfulness. She loved others like Jesus, because she belonged to Jesus. And that proves something for us.

Look in verse 1. Jesus says

John 15:1–2 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.

john 15.1-

God the Father tends to those that belong to Jesus. He prunes them so that they bear more fruit. In other words, when we look at the life of a woman who loved Jesus, and who sought to see the world like Jesus does, we see evidence that she clung to Jesus for dear life, and Jesus did not disappoint. In her final years, God the Father was still tending to her. The stories that I’ve been hearing prove that. God keeps tending the vine and its branches.

Look in verses 4 and 5 with me. <<READ>>

That word, “Abide,” comes up here, and it keeps turning up through verse 17. This is another source of comfort for us. Here’s why:

II. Call: Now in the midst of sorrow, come to Christ and continue in Christ

Look at again:

Note supportive nature of Yvonne

John 15:1–5 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.

Jesus does not deal in platitudes. The True Vine speaks truth. Not everyone is a fruitful branch. And not every path leads to God.

Jesus is absolutely unique in the history of the world. No one else spoke like Him. You read the Gospels and what you’ll find is that He knows you, knows your heart, just as He knew what these disciples needed to hear on this night. Over and over again, men and women have undertaken to read this book as a mere intellectual exercise, or as a religious self-help manual, or in mockery, or in frank disbelief, and have been astonished into silence by the Jesus that they find in these pages.

They find that there is life in no one else.

They find that they want what Yvonne had.

Now, as we mourn, here is the call of this text: If you are not in the vine, come to Christ today. All the fruit you’ve tried to bear in your life has failed to satisfy. Every religious maze you’ve searched has failed to give you true life.

Jesus promises true life to those who cling to Him. That’s what abiding is - clinging to Jesus. Trusting Him. And He will produce the kind of fruit that abides, the kind that remains into eternity, because it’s measured not in titles or book deals or tenure or anything else that passes away, but in Christ’s own love poured out in His world.

If you are already a follower of Christ, the call to cling to Christ is one to continue in Him. In your grief, remember that He remains your life, the true vine. Consider all the ways Yvonne’s support and care for you over the years reflected Christ’s own support and care in her life. This blessing to you was first Christ’s blessing in her.

So

Continue in Christ, abide in Him. Cling to Him for dear life.