Sermon Tone Analysis

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 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.

“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.