John 15: Abide

Introduction

John vs. Synoptics.

when I come home there are usually two type of conversations that can happen. The first is a rehearsal of our days. A play by play that gives a picture of the day. We usually have these conversations because it invites the family into my day without going into a lot detail usually because the attention span and interruptions won’t sustain anything deeper. Sometimes though, every blue moon or so, I start talking about how those events impacted my heart. How they made me feel. This isn’t a rehearsal but a discourse. This is like the gospel of john compared to the Synoptics.

We’ve seen thus far that of the Deathbed Declarations we have

John 13- Love

John 14- Obey

John 15- Abide

We’ve also discussed that the setting of 13&14 is the Upper Room or the night of his betrayal and rest, and day before his crucifixion.

Here in John 14:31 we see Jesus saying, “Rise, let us go from here.”

So they are now in motion. Moving from the Upper Room and they don’t land at a place until John 17 in the Garden of Gethsamane.

Leading us to believe that John 15 & 16 is spoken as they are walking towards the Garden.

True Vine (John 15:1)

Understanding fruitfulness and abiding begins with understanding Jesus as the True Vine.

Referencing the Nation of Israel

Psalm 80:8-10

A clear reference to the Exodus and how God established the Nation of Israel.

Scripture is riddled with Vine imagery.

Jeremiah 2:21

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour! 3“And now, O dwellers of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I exhort you to judge between Me and My vineyard

Isaiah 5

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2He dug it up and cleared the stones and planted the finest vines. He built a watchtower in the middle and dug out a winepress as well. He waited for the vineyard to yield good grapes, but the fruit it produced was sour! 3“And now, O dwellers of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I exhort you to judge between Me and My vineyard.

Herod’s Temple or the Second Temple constructed in the 5th century BCE had a “large golden vine hung with large golden fruit above the door leading to the inner sanctum.”[1]

In the period of the Maccabees the image of the vine was the emblem on their currency.

The people of Israel took this imagery to heart, and believed that their fruitfulness was a result of their kinship.

But Jesus constantly taught against ancestral security.

Matthew 3:9, do not presume to say to yourselves ‘we have abraham as our father, for I tell you God is able to raise up these stones to be children of Abraham.”

Israel believed their fruitfulness was a consequence of their ancestral identity. But Jesus says… I AM THE TRUE VINE.

Now nobody here would make the same claim as the Israelites.

But is it not true that we too tend to find our security, sustenance, and significance from other “false vines.”

Here are 3 that I have found in my life, that you too may have.

Self: If a vine is the source in which we find our nourishment and sufficiency then I wholeheartedly believe that our tendency as Christians and ministers is to gravitate towards finding these elements in ourselves, or by ourselves.

Missionary conference: What can we do without Jesus?”

We give lip service to our need for Jesus, but honestly we try to accomplish way too much without him.

What we know:

We’ve deceived ourselves into thinking that the strength of a Christian is found in how much he or she knows. In 1 Corinthians 8:2-3 the Apostle Paul writes, “If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” On this passage John Piper writes, “Deeper than knowing God is being known by God. What defines us as Christians is not most profoundly that we have come to know him but that he took note of us and made us his own.

Norddine and Beth Moore

Knowing a lot about God can make us feel strong, and even garner the praise and recognition of others, but knowledge cannot free us from sin or produce lasting fruitfulness.

What we do:

We may believe that we have earned fruitfulness due to our incessant service to god and His Kingdom. Like Martha we stand near Jesus saying… aren’t you paying attention yet!

So Jesus starts with I am the True Vine; and there are other vines that we try and find our sustenance, nourishment or security from. And like a good Father, or a good Gardner the first purpose in pruning is revealing false vines to establish Christ as the True Vine.

What false vines do you gravitate toward? Where are you tempted to find your nourishment? Security? Identity? or Significance?

Father is the Vinedresser

A.W. Tozer “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

How we view God will serve as the lens through which we see everything. Our circumstances, our families, other people, and definitely our season of pruning. Any idea of God that is not shaped by His manifested character in the Bible is insufficient, and deceptive. More times than not our image of God is slowly crafted by our interpretation of our life experiences.

Kids watch everything, but we don’t leave it to their own interpretation.

As much as our toddlers are prone to misinterpretation, the same could be said about every one of God’s children. Adam and Eve had always been naked, but when sin entered their hearts and lives they interpreted their nakedness as shameful. As God confronted Adam he said, “When I heard you I was afraid, because I was naked.” Resulting in God’s reprove, “Who told you that you were naked?” Nothing changed in Adam and Eve’s outward appearance, but the consequence of sin was a new interpretation of their state. We all know the verse, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Sin hardens our hearts, and provides a new filter through which we interpret life. This new interpretation of life’s events then leads us to apply wrong beliefs about God.

My Dad as coach. Praise when I performed. Silence when I didn’t.

Did my dad love me any less. Of course not. But I interpreted it through my own lens and applied wrong meaning to my dad.

We do this to God.

The #1 reason we resist pruning is because we don’t trust God as the Vinedresser.

Our greatest need is an accurate understanding of the Father, and oftentimes he will prune us to pull down false understandings of who he is in order to resurrect new ones.

Pruning

Pruning is the most important operation for maintaining the fruitfulness of the vine. The purpose of the vine is to produce fruit… he prunes therefore to produce fruit.

What then is the fruit?