Branches That Abide

Well, it’s that time of year again. I hope you like figs, because soon you’re going to be getting figs, and you’re going to be hearing fig stories.

Our fig tree is once again loaded with ripening figs. Now, I love figs, and I’m extremely excited that we’re going to be getting another big harvest again.

But what we’ve learned from the past couple of seasons’ worth of figs, is that it’s impossible for us to eat them all. And, judging from the number of jars of fig jam left in the refrigerator here, you guys didn’t do your share of the work last year.

So, I’m here to tell you that we expect you to do better this year. And if you have any recipes that include figs, please pass them along to Annette. I am bound and determined not to let any of our figs go to waste this year.

The funny thing to me is that, as many figs as we harvested last year, Annette took steps a couple of months ago to ensure that our fig tree would be even more fruitful this year.

While she was out doing her gardening one Saturday morning, she took out the big loppers and lopped off a couple of the low branches that were growing along the ground, even though they produced figs last year.

When I asked her what she was doing, she said, “I’ve got to prune those branches so they don’t use up energy the tree needs to produce more fruit.”

What do I know? I’m all thumbs, and none of them are green. She’s the gardener; I’m just the one who enjoys the fruits of her labor.

Now, during the time of Jesus, there weren’t many people who were as clueless about agriculture as I am. It was an agrarian society, and so most people understood the important concepts of agriculture, even if they were not themselves farmers.

And so, whenever Jesus used agricultural metaphors in His teaching — whether He was talking about fig trees or grapevines or whatever — His listeners would have understood just what He was talking about.

It’s harder for some of us to understand sometimes, since for many of us, harvesting crops means picking the best-looking vegetables out of a grocery store cooler.

So today, as we continue to look at the images given for the Church in the New Testament, let’s dig into what Jesus said about vines and branches.

Our text appears in John, chapter 15. While you’re turning there, let me remind you what’s happening in this passage.

What we read in this passage are some of Jesus’ last words to His disciples before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.

They had been in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem, where Jesus washed their feet and where they received the Last Supper.

Judas had already left the gathering, and Peter had been warned that He would deny Jesus three times before the night was over.

And then, Jesus began to teach the disciples some of His most important lessons. Indeed, chapters 14 through 18 of the Gospel of John are one of the most theologically rich and doctrinally significant portions of the gospels.

After promising in chapter 14 that He would send the Holy Spirit as a comforter and a helper upon His return to heaven in a resurrected and glorified body, Jesus says, “Get up, let us go from here.”

Now, the next place we get a location cue is at the beginning of chapter 18, where John writes that Jesus “went forth with His disciples over the ravine of the Kidron, where there was a garden, in which He entered with His disciples.”

Now, what’s interesting is that John is the only gospel writer who records any of what Jesus said in chapters 14 through 17. In fact, Matthew, Mark, and Luke all transition directly from Jesus’ warning to Peter to Jesus entering the garden with His disciples.

The difference in these accounts should not bother us, because we understand that each of the gospels was written to highlight something different about Jesus.

They were not primarily historical accounts, nor were they intended as a play-by-play of the life and ministry of Jesus.

So, John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was attempting to accomplish something different in his gospel than were Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And he gives the purpose statement for his gospel in verses 30 and 31 of chapter 20.

John 20:30–31 NASB95

Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

John wrote his gospel account so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Messiah, and the Son of God. And he wrote this gospel account so that those who heard it or read it might have life because of their belief in Jesus.

That’s why John 3:16 is such an important verse in this gospel. It completely encapsulates not just the message of the Gospel, but the message of this particular gospel.

So, at the end of chapter 14, Jesus tells the disciples to get up and leave from the upper room where they had shared the Last Supper.

And based on the fact that the other gospel accounts skip right to the garden, we can imagine that what appears in John 15-17, were things Jesus shared with the disciples as they passed over the Kidron Valley, onto the Mount of Olives, and into the Garden of Gethsemane.

Now, they would have passed the temple on their way, and there’s a good chance they would have looked up and seen on the front of that temple a great golden grapevine, the national emblem of Israel.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see the grapevine used as a symbol for Israel. This is important here, because, if it’s true that Jesus taught while they all walked on this evening, then there’s a neat connection that’s made.

Perhaps as they passed the temple, some of His disciples looked up and saw the golden vine. If so, then the way that Jesus begins this passage makes even more sense. He would now use that symbol to teach them an important lesson about bearing fruit.

Let’s read verses 1-11.

John 15:1–11 NASB95

1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. 3 “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. 6 “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. 7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. 9 “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 10 “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

“I am the true vine,” Jesus says in verse 1. Israel had been symbolized by the grapevine, but that nation had never borne the fruit that God had called it to bear.

Israel was supposed to have been such a light to the nations of the world that they would flock to it to see what made it different.

Instead, when the people of Israel came into the Promised Land, they adopted the same false gods the people there before them had worshiped. They fell into the same sins of the nations around them.

And instead of being a nation holy to the Lord — a nation set apart from the others for Him — they became just as idolatrous, just as sinful, just as broken, as the rest of the world.

And so, God sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to show the world how it would look for a man to live in perfect obedience to and fellowship with God through the Holy Spirit. Jesus came, and in His sinless life, He showed us what true life looked like.

But He came not only to show us true life. He came offering that life to all who would believe in Him, to all who would follow Him in faith.

And this was an offer He could make, because He gave His own life on the cross, taking upon Himself the sins of all mankind — yours and mine — and the just punishment for those sins.

From the beginning, God had said that sin would bring death, the complete separation of man from the God who had made us to be in fellowship with Him.

And so, as Jesus suffered and died on that cross, bearing our sins, He experienced the physical death that we all will experience because of sin’s curse on the world. But He also experienced the much-worse spiritual separation from His Father, with whom He had existed in perfect harmony for all eternity.

This was the price that was required for sin to be conquered. The sinless Son of God had to bear the sins of the world unto death in order for the sinful world to have the opportunity for forgiveness and life through faith in Him and in His sacrifice.

But the good news of salvation did not end at the cross, praise God. If it had, then the best we could hope for would be forgiveness for our sins.

Instead, the hope of all who follow Jesus in faith is in resurrection. We who put our faith in Jesus have the hope of resurrection and eternal life, because we follow Him who called Himself “the resurrection and the life.”

His own resurrection is proof that Jesus has the power to keep His promise to raise believers to eternal life, life the way it was always meant to be — in the presence of and in perfect fellowship with Him and with His Father and with the Holy Spirit.

Israel had failed in its calling to be the life-giving vine into which the nations could be grafted and receive life from God. But Jesus is Israel fulfilled. He is the true vine in whom all can find life through faith in Him.

And it’s important to note that in this passage, Jesus is speaking to the 11 believing disciples. Judas had already left by this time. Only those with true faith in Him as the Son of God and promised Messiah-Redeemer remained.

So the contrasts Jesus makes in this passage are not between believers and unbelievers. They are contrasts between believers who bear fruit and believers who do not bear fruit.

And to the extent that we want to be a church that bears fruit for God, we must individually be believers who bear fruit.

What happens to branches of the vine that do not bear fruit? The vinedresser — the Father, God — takes them away. Actually, the Greek word here can mean either “to take away” or “to lift up.”

There’s some reason to think that Jesus had the lifting up meaning in mind here. He was teaching during the spring, when vinedressers would lift unfruitful branches off the ground onto a pole or trellis to keep them from becoming moldy or diseased and to make them more likely to produce fruit in the next season.

Jesus describes the branches in verse 2 as being “in Me,” which always, throughout the Gospel of John, is a way of describing a true believer.

So, Jesus clearly looks into the future here and anticipates that there will be some believers who bear fruit and some who will not bear fruit.

Both sets of believers, however, will receive the attention of the vinedresser, and the truth is that the work He does in you may very well be painful.

Certainly, it had been a painful process for the disciples. Jesus says in verse 3 that they are already clean — already pruned — because of what He has taught them.

At times, He’d chastised them for their arrogance and pride. At other times, He’d challenged the depth and content of their faith. He’d even allowed them to fail in their efforts to serve Him.

This pruning process had stripped them of the characteristics that would cause them to be unfruitful, especially the notion that the could be fruitful in their own power.

That’s what Jesus talks about in verses 4 and 5.

“Abide in Me, and I in you,” He says. That’s how you can bear fruit.

Those branches that Annette cut from our fig tree will never bear fruit again. They are not connected to the life-giving trunk of that tree.

So it is with grapevines and Christians. Only insofar as we abide in Christ can we be the fruit-producing people we are meant to be. Apart from Him, we can do nothing.

But what does it mean to “abide”?

Perhaps your translation reads “Remain in me.” And there’s a sense in which that is true. A victorious life in Christ is one in which the Christian remains true to his faith.

We have all known Christians who shone brightly for a time and then gradually or suddenly lost their light. They turned away from their faith, letting the cares of the world take draw their eyes away from Jesus. And now, the world sees them as one of its own. They are like salt that has lost its saltiness.

But there is something deeper about abiding than just remaining. Abiding carries the sense of a life continually lived in the midst of something.

Annette abides with my messiness and my bad jokes, because she has pledged to remain with me until the bitter end.

Abiding in Jesus means keeping His commandments. That’s what Jesus says in verse 10. Just as He keeps His Father’s commandments and abides in His love, we abide in the love of Christ by keeping His commandments. This doesn’t mean He loves us any less when we fail to keep His commandments; rather, it means that we fail to experience the blessings and the fullness of His love when we fail to keep them.

And what were His commandments? Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.

We’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating: How do you love God? In the Bible, love refers to seeking the best for someone else.

That’s what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. If you love your neighbor as yourself, you’re seeking the best for him or her, just as you would do for yourself.

But how does that translate into our relationship with God? How do we seek the best for God?

I think we do so by BELIEVING the best about God. I think it means we trust that God is good all the time, regardless of our circumstances. I think it means that we PUT our trust in God in all our circumstances.

It’s not uncommon to see Christians turn to God in times of trouble. Indeed, we SHOULD do so. But abiding suggests something greater than this.

Abiding suggests looking to God in Christ in every circumstance. In the bad times, in the good times, and in the everyday times.

If we are abiding in Christ, we recognize that He alone is the giver of life. We have life in Him and in Him alone. This speaks to a continuing and continual relationship with Him, one that honors Him as Savior and Lord, as Savior and Master.

Apart from Him, we can do nothing. If we are abiding in Christ, THEN we can bear fruit. THEN we can be the people we were meant to be and accomplish the things we were meant to accomplish in His name.

But if our lives don’t reflect this idea of abiding — if we are the kind of Christians who go on about our lives the same way the fallen world goes on about its lives and then turn to Jesus only when there’s trouble — then we have removed ourselves from the life-giving vine. We become dried-up branches good only to be thrown into the fire.

Warren Wiersbe said once that Christians are good for only two things: Bearing fruit and making fires. Fires might be nice for a while, but they do not make new life. Only fruit does that.

Think about it. Besides for eating, what’s the purpose of fruit? Fruit contains seeds that make more fruit.

As people who have been called to be disciple-making disciples, we are fruit that contains the seeds to make more fruit.

This is the thing for which you were made when you who have followed Jesus in faith were made into new creatures. You were made to be fruitful and multiply. to bear more fruit.

And, as Jesus says in verse 9, it brings glory to God when we bear fruit, when we serve to bring others to a saving knowledge of Jesus. He also says there that this is one way we prove to be His disciples.

Now, we skipped an important verse, so let’s go back to it, verse 7.

If you abide in Jesus, and His words — His teachings — abide in you, then you can ask Him whatever you want, and He’ll give it to you. Right? Well, that’s what it says there, isn’t it?

Well, yes, that IS what it says there. But, as you should know by now, context is everything.

What’s the context of this passage? It’s about abiding in Christ — about trusting in Him in all circumstances. It’s about loving Him with all your heart, soul, and mind. It’s about being in a continuing and continual relationship with Him so that you may bear fruit.

And so, we must look at this promise in the context of those things. If you’re abiding in Christ — if you’re in a fruit-bearing relationship with Him — then you’re going to be in tune with Him.

Grapevines don’t produce oranges, do they? Of course not. If you’re abiding in Christ, your values are going to align with His values. You’re going to want the things that He wants.

And what does Jesus want? To bring His Father glory. And, in the context of this passage, what brings His Father glory? Branches that bear fruit.

So, this verse isn’t saying to pray for a new car and you’ll get it, or to pray for your candidate to be elected to office, and he’ll be elected.

What Jesus is saying here is that if we’re abiding in Him as fruit-bearing branches, then whatever resources we need to bear more fruit are ours for the asking.

He will give us what we need to accomplish the ministry He has given us, and we will bear much fruit, and the Father will be glorified in it.

This would have been especially important to the disciples, who were about to be sent out into the world with a message of forgiveness and hope that the world had never heard. But it is no less important to us, since we, too, are sent out with the same message today.

Do you want to know whether you are abiding in Christ? The answers are right here in this passage.

If you’re a believer who is abiding in Christ, you will have your rightly oriented prayers answered. If you’re abiding in Christ, your love for Jesus and for others will be ever growing. And if you’re abiding in Christ, you will experience the fullness of joy.

These things are true of the individual Christian, for every branch that abides in the true vine. But they are also true for the church.

Just as every believer partakes in the one common life of the true vine, the corporate church also partakes in this life.

We, here at Liberty Spring Christian Church, are together a branch from this true vine. And as some of you long-timers here look back over your time in this church, I wonder if you can sense the times that it has been abiding in Christ versus the times this church has been cut off from the vine.

Can you look back and see the times when prayers went unanswered, when love was in short supply, when joy seemed absent from this fellowship? Can you remember the times when prayers were answered, when love abounded, and when joy seemed to grow and grow?

Let me ask you: Where are we now? Are we abiding, or have we been cut off?

I believe this church was meant for more than the fire. I believe this church was meant to bear fruit. And I believe in this promise of Jesus: that if we ask for what we need to bear much fruit, we will receive it.

Let us re-commit ourselves today to praying that God would give us as individuals and as a church the resources we need to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Let us re-commit ourselves today to praying that we might bear much fruit, to the glory of God almighty.