Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

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First off, let me say thank you for having me.

Part of preparing for pastoral ministry is practicing preparing and delivery sermons and there’s only so much of that you can do in a classroom setting at seminary.

Getting experience preaching in a local church is crucial and so I’m glad to be here this morning.

The text I chose for my sermon today is .

This is a pretty familiar text because its where Jesus gives us the metaphor of the vine and the branches.

And I love this passage of Scripture because it challenges every single person who encounters it.

Whether you’ve been a faithful Christian for 80 years, your struggling in your faith, or your not a Christian at all, this text has something to say to you.

For example, maybe you’ve been following Jesus for awhile but your walk with the Lord has become joyless and has turned into drudgery.

Or maybe you know your Bible well, you regularly attend church, and your obedient to God in every area of your life, but you do those things because you want to earn favor in God’s eyes.

Maybe you’re more mystical and see your faith as a relationship between you and Jesus with little need for the local church or for keeping the commands of the Bible.

Or, like I said earlier, maybe you aren’t a Christian at all and you think that whatever the afterlife is like you will get there because you’ve been a good person.

I think we can all at least partially identify with one of these categories and no matter where you’re at today has something to say to you.

So let’s turn now and read .

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Before we jump in at verse 1, it’s important to keep the context of Jesus’s words here in mind.

This passage comes in the middle of what is commonly called “The Farewell Discourse.”

It’s called that because this is one of the last times Jesus will address his disciples before his death.

And prior to chapter 15, Jesus has been telling his followers about the Holy Spirit.

He has told them that even though he is leaving them physically, the Father will send the Spirit and therefore God will still be with them.

He has also told them that difficulty will come, but that they will get to do works that are even greater than Jesus himself has done.

In other words, Jesus tells his followers that he is leaving and trouble is coming, but God is still with them and God will build his church on earth.

1) The Metaphor (1-6)

This brings us to chapter 15 and the vine and the branches.

We are going to take this passage in two parts this morning.

First, we will look at what Jesus is teaching us through the metaphor of the vine and the branches in verses 1-6.

Then, in verses 7-17 we will look at the concept of abiding, and the different things Jesus calls us to abide in.

So look with me at verse 1.

1) The Metaphor (1-6)

Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

a) The Vine (1)

Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.”

The first thing that sticks out to me in this verse is that use of the word true.

Jesus doesn’t just call himself the vine; he calls himself the true vine.

This is significant because it teaches us two things.

First, Jesus is succeeding where Israel has failed.

Many places in the Old Testament, Israel is referred to as the vine, but here Jesus says, “I am the true vine.”

Second, Jesus is the true source of nourishment, sustenance, and life.

There are many other places we can go to sustain us but only Jesus is the true source of life.

The main point of this metaphor is that Christians must be nourished and sourced in Christ or they will fall away.

If the place we go for meaning in life or the strength to get through the day is something less than God himself we are missing out on the true source of all things.

Whether we are motivated by good things like work, relaxation, or family, or sinful things like alcohol abuse or greed, if our main reason for getting up each morning is not Jesus, the true vine, then there will be a day when the motivation runs out.

We can get fired or retire from our jobs.

Family members move to a new city or pass away.

And alcohol abuse ends in premature death.

But in this passage Jesus says that he wants to be your primary source of life and he isn’t going anywhere.

b) The Vinedresser (1)

We also see in verse 1 that Jesus calls his Father “the vinedresser.”

The imagery here reveals that if Jesus is the source of all life for the Christian, then the Father is the sovereign and all-powerful one who is working in the lives of believers.

And we can’t press the metaphor too far of course because in reality a vine and the one who grows the vine are totally distinct beings, but Jesus has said elsewhere in the Gospel of John that he and the Father are one.

But I think the point is that the Father is working behind the scenes in this world to produce a result that he desires and Jesus is the visible glory of his Father.

Just like with an actual vine, if someone comes to admire a vine you’ve grown they will see the beauty of the vine but they will praise you for growing it.

So it is with the Father and the Son.

We see Jesus’s finished work on the cross and his ongoing work in our lives, and we give glory to the Father.

c) The Branches (2-6)

So now that we’ve been introduced to the vine and the vinedresser, let’s meet us, the branches.

Jesus says in verse 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.”

The first group of people in the verse are those who do not bear fruit.

Now we might want to think that when Jesus is talking about those who do not bear fruit he is talking about people who don’t claim to be Christians.

After all, there are billions of people around the world who do not know Christ and thus they are not bearing fruit for God.

However, because Jesus goes on to exhort his listeners to abide in him or else they will fall away, it’s clear that he has professing Christians in mind.

In other words, what Jesus is saying here is that those who profess to know me but do not show evidence of knowing me, do not know me.

And there aren’t any who get a pass.

This is “every branch that does not bear fruit.”

Every person who claims to be a Christian but goes on living their life the same way they would if they were not a Christian, is not saved.

Jesus says that the Father will take them away from the vine.

These are difficult words and they are especially difficult for us in the Southern United States.

Most of us were born to Christian parents, started going to church as babies, and were given our first Bible before we could even read.

In China or India or the Middle East this isn’t a problem because it costs people something to be a Christian and so nobody is going claim it if they don’t live it.

It’s easy for us to claim and not live it, though.

And if we do, Jesus says we will be taken away and will not experience eternal life with him.

The next group are those who bear fruit.

And we might expect Jesus to commend or congratulate this group, but what does he say instead?

He says that the Father prunes this group so that they will bear more fruit.

Think of growing a garden or some flowers at your house, maybe a tomato plant.

Even when the plant is producing tomatoes you can’t just leave it alone and let it be.

You need to prune away the dead areas and you need to clean up the branches so that the vine can produce even bigger and better fruit.

This is the picture Jesus wants to give us of the Christian life.

God didn’t save you to leave you be until you die and then let you into heaven.

says “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” but then just two verses later in , Paul says that we were “Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

And in order to produce fruit for God we need to be pruned.

We need God to strip away our sinful tendencies and worldly passions and replace them with obedience, love for God, and love for our neighbor.

The pruning may be painful.

Often God uses suffering or disappointment to wean us off the things of the world but he does it out of love.

He does it because he wants us to be better supported by the true vine and he wants us to produce fruit that glorifies him.

Before we move on I want to unpack what I think Jesus means when he uses the word fruit.

In , Jesus connects fruit to righteous living, experiencing joy in Christ, loving one another, and doing evangelism.

It’s clear that when Jesus talks about producing fruit he doesn’t just have one small thing in mind.

The idea is that God is sanctifying his people for their wholistic well-being and his comprehensive glory.

So far this has been a pretty challenging and dreary passage.

Either you aren’t producing fruit for God and he will take you away, or you are producing fruit but he wants prune you so that you produce bigger and better fruit.

Verse 3 has a different tone though.

If you are a follower of Christ in this room listen closely to verse 3. “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.”

Jesus is saying, if you are in me and you are producing fruit for my name, you are clean.

You’ve been saved.

I don’t count your sin against you, I don’t count your failings against you.

You are clean.

And the best news is that our cleanliness is based soley on Jesus’s word.

I think what Jesus means by his word is all that he has said and all that he has done.