How To Bear Fruit

Welcome

Good morning again everyone and welcome to anyone joining us online! This morning we are switching up what we originally were going to talk about. We were going to go through How To Hope In God, but I actually feel like it would be good for us to talk about one of the topics we talked about at camp and even have covered a little in our adult Sunday school class. So this morning, we are going to still have a “How to” sermon, but instead of “How to Hope in God” (Which we will do next week) we are going to cover “How To Bear Fruit.” Sherry and Katrina have heard most of this already, but even for you guys (and myself), it is a good reminder of what we are supposed to do now, once church camp is over. The reality of not being at church camp is setting in more and now this becomes really practical.

Prayer

Engage

There’s a story I heard about a girl who asks her father how he liked the iPad that she got him for his birthday. He was cutting up vegetables for supper, but responded that he liked it. The daughter then notices that her father was using his ipad as the cutting board for chopping the vegetables, and she watched in horror as he finished, rinsed it off in the sink, and then stuck it inside the dishwasher!

Obviously that is not the intended purpose of an iPad. Now, we hear that and think it’s ridiculous, but have you ever seen anyone use something expensive for something other than what it was actually created for? For something that wasn’t actually it’s purpose?

Tension

A pretty common question that we ask ourselves, at some point or another in our life, is “What is my purpose?” Has anyone asked themselves that question? It’s a huge question to consider. What is your purpose, what are you designed to do? Sometimes, we don’t live our life really according to the purpose for which we were made. Without realizing it, we are using our life like this father used this ipad. In the completely wrong way and not anywhere close to what it was intended for. This morning, I want us to get a broad sense of what our purpose is as Christians. What are we meant to do? And how are we meant to do it? A good passage for us to consider on this subject is in John 15.

John 15:1–8 (NIV)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“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. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

Our Purpose is to bear fruit for God’s Glory

First, let’s hit what this passage says our purpose is. Verse 8 says that for the glory of God the father, you should bear fruit. That is what your purpose is, that’s what all of our purpose is. We need to bear fruit in our lives. So what is this fruit? Does this mean that God wants us to start growing apples out of our heads? Not quite.

To bear fruit is to see the Holy Spirit produce Christlikeness in us. To bear fruit means that the Holy Spirit makes us more and more like Christ. And the way we bear fruit is if we are connected to the vine.

Abide in the True Vine

When we abide in Christ he produces something within us, he produces Christlikeness within us. Abiding in Christ is something that we have to take seriously in our Christian walk, abiding in Christ is our goal, our desire, if we have Christ as our savior. Abiding in Jesus also can’t be overstated. If you look at this chapter, you can see how often the word abide or remain is used. The verb abide, or remain, is used 11 times just in this one chapter. So when we abide in him, He produces fruit in our lives, he produces the fruit of the Spirit that we read about in Galatians.

Galatians 5:22–23 (NIV)

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.

Abiding in Jesus produces kindness, patience, gentleness, all of those aspects of the fruit of the Spirit within our lives.

Remaining in Jesus is what matters. We can get caught up with a list of things that we think we ought to be doing, but ultimately, growing in our relationship with Christ is what matters. One way that we see this is in Luke chapter 10.

Luke 10:38–42 NIV

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

When Jesus came to Mary and Martha’s house, Martha got busy. I think that in this encounter we often fall onto the side of Martha. We want to stay busy and keep doing things. And sometimes, we even are doing them for the right reasons. Sometimes we go from one thing to the next because we want to please Jesus. We think we have to do enough to keep this relationship with him. But what happens if you keep drinking from a cup and don’t refill it? It’s going to run out. We have to be in touch with Jesus because he is the one who fills our cup. He is the one who is going to recharge us and help us continue to bear fruit. But, we have to take the time to stop our crazy hectic lives, and sit at his feet. Sitting at the feet of Jesus is essential to bearing fruit, to fulfilling your purpose.

So we want to abide or remain in Jesus so that we can bear fruit. If we walked out of church this morning and planted an apple tree, would we see fruit immediately? No, it takes times for fruit to grow. So we shouldn’t despair if we don’t see all of the fruits of the Spirit fully developed in our life over night. It is going to take time, time spent connected to Jesus. But, if you are a Christian and follow Jesus, this fruit will grow and will be evident to people when they look at your life. You yourself should see how this fruit grows in your life. You can begin to see how you are becoming kinder, more patient, gentle, even around people that you couldn’t stand before. All of this, once again happens because you remain in Christ, you stay attached to him.

Be Pruned

So if we abide in Christ, we are going to bear fruit. I read one story where a guy moved with his family out to the country and noticed that the fence that he shared with his neighbor had a huge grape vine on it.

But a few days moving in, he noticed the neighbor out there hacking away at the vine with some large shears. He was worried that his neighbor was going to kill the vine!

Trying to be diplomatic, he walked over and asked the neighbor, “You don’t like grapes, I guess?” “Love grapes,” he replied. Bruce tried to express his hopes that they could share some of the grapes, but his confusion and disappointment over what the neighbor was doing was obvious. After observing that he was a city boy and surmising that he didn’t know much about grapes, the neighbor explained, “Well, son, we can either grow ourselves a lot of beautiful leaves filling up this whole fence line. Or we can have the biggest, juiciest, sweetest grapes you and your family have ever seen. We just can’t have both.” He knew that to bear good fruit, that vine had to be pruned.

The way that we bear more fruit is by having the Spirit prune our life.

Ask yourself: Am I dragging around “dead branches” in my life? Maybe it’s a bad relationship, an old wound from your past, a negative attitude that keeps you from enjoying life to the fullest or anything you look to for a sense of security other than God Himself.

It would be nice if we could see what God sees and say, “Yes, God. Let’s get rid of that dead branch.” But many times we’re too afraid to give up what we know, what’s familiar, for something new that we just can’t see or understand.

The truth is you can be miserable dragging those dead things around or you can go through the pain of letting God “prune” them away. Even though it’s uncomfortable, the best thing you can do is let God prune you, because after the hard part is over, you will see some amazing results!

Pruning is not very pleasant, it can hurt and be difficult to go through, but the fruit is better because of it. The fact is, that we all come into the Christian life with some measure of baggage. We all bring parts of our flesh with us, just like we mentioned last night. Throughout our life, God is going to point out these areas of our life that we are still prone to sin and he is going to prune us, he’s going to cut these things out of our life. Now, if that sounds unpleasant, remember that God’s aim in this is not to cause us pain, but to help us fulfill our purpose. But you’ve got to let the Holy Spirit prune you.

Skit Guys Video

Grow Fruit

Branch illustration

What can we do to make this branch grow fruit? Can we force it? Can we will it to have fruit?

The only way it bears fruit is to remain connected to the vine and let the gardener prune and do his work.