John 15.1-8
Delivered on Sunday 17 August 2008 in All Saints', Preston-on-Tees
John 15.1-8 - 'I am the true vine'
Do you like wine? Have you ever been to France to see the vineyards, or to Italy or Spain, or somewhere more exotic? I've seen them in France, great long straight lines of vines up the hillside. Vines are the plant of a settled people, they need time to be planted, cultivated, watered and looked after. So vineyards should have been a symbol of permanence for Israel who had been planted by God in their promised land.
But as we heard in Isaiah 5, the story didn't quite go like that:
I will sing a song for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.
Isaiah 5.1-2 (NIV)
So when Jesus says, 'I am the true vine', he means, 'I am who Israel was always meant to be, the obedient Son of God who bears good fruit for his Father.' Unlike Israel, when the Father looked to Jesus, he saw only good fruit, no bad fruit.
So it makes sense, doesn't it, for Jesus to say in verse 4, 'Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.' Unless we stick close to the Master, unless we are united with him, we cannot bear good fruit. Unless we remain in Jesus, we'll be like Israel, a disappointing vineyard for God, not bearing the fruit he wants us to bear.
What is that fruit that Jesus wants us to bear for God's glory? Jesus says in verse 8: 'This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.' What is that fruit?
The obvious verses that come to mind are Galatians 5.22-23: 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.'
But also, Ephesians 5.8-10 is this: 'For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.'
And in Matthew 3.8 John the Baptist says this: 'Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.'
What all these verses mean, and what Jesus is saying here in John 15, is that the natural consequence of remaining in him is to produce good fruit. We have been rescued from darkness and now live in the light. We have been given the Holy Spirit, who produces the fruit of a godly character in us. We have repented of our sins, so let us live a life in keeping with that repentance, not turning back to our old ways.
Jesus wants us to bear good fruit by remaining in him, he wants us to 'live lives worthy of the calling we have received,' as Paul wrote to the Ephesians (4.1). And he knows we can only do that if we remain in him, if we are the branches of his vine.
The Father is the gardener, pruning the branches in Jesus that bear fruit, so that they may be even more fruitful. All the gardeners among us will know how important pruning is, to encourage bigger and tastier fruit. I confess that I am not a gardener myself, but this is what I understand pruning is about! Please correct me after the service if I'm wrong...!
Pruning is a painful process. It may be that God takes us out of a ministry we love doing, even one he's called us to do. For the last two years I haven't really been preaching at all. When I have in college preaching classes, it was a pretty awful experience. I had to keep clinging to the things people had told me, that God would use me as a preacher. Finally I get a curacy and I preach, what, six times now since I've arrived, and another three times in the next three weeks. Curates are supposed to preach once a month in their first year. But finally God has enabled me to do what I feel called to do, and some! Hopefully any fruit that comes from it will give glory to God, because that is what he gives us our gifts for.
You see, it might be unpleasant when God 'prunes' us, we might feel frustrated, unused, unneeded. But the gifts he gives us are, ultimately, his, to be used for his glory, not our own. He doesn't give us big churches so we can brag about being in the 'premier league' of the Church of England (as the vicar of a previous church of mine once said). Big or small, noticed or unnoticed, he gives us all gifts to use for his kingdom, gifts to bear fruit for his glory. We'll look more at these gifts next term. Here Jesus makes it absolutely clear: we will only be able to use them, to bear fruit for God, if we remain in him.
But what about the other half of what Jesus says? He says in verse 2: 'He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit,' and in verse 6 he says, 'If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.'
What is Jesus talking about here? Does he mean that we are all in danger of not remaining in him, of being cut off from him, cast into the fire?
To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what Jesus means here. But what I do know is this. In John 6.39 Jesus says, 'And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me.' And in John 10.27-28 Jesus says, 'My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no-one can snatch them out of my hand.'
Jesus does not mean we should always be looking over our shoulders, terrified that God will cut us off from Jesus. But he is stressing how important it is that we respond to the gift of life that God has given us by living it to the full. We must live a life worthy of the calling we have received. We must, or our faith is found wanting. James writes that even demons know there is one God—and shudder. 'As the body without the spirit is dead,' he writes (2.26), 'so faith without deeds is dead.'
If we are not bearing fruit for God's glory, a godly life, building up his church, we must ask ourselves if something is wrong.
We must live out the gift of life that God has given us through Jesus, to glorify and enjoy God forever. That's the purpose of life! And you know what, Jesus promises that we will bear fruit, in verse 5: 'If someone remains in me and I in them, they will bear much fruit.'
But, we all know don't we that we mess up from time to time. And Jesus knows that too. One of the best verses in the Bible, one I'm so thankful to the Holy Spirit that he inspired Paul to write it to the Romans, in 8.1-2: 'Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.'
There are some verses that all Christians should learn by heart, and that is probably one of them. Maybe I'll do that this week!
'There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.' You see, not only does God love us enough to give us life in the first place, but when we stuff it up, he forgives us. When Jesus says, 'If anyone does not remain in me...' he doesn't mean that if we stuff it up, if we make a mistake, he'll chuck us out. He means that if we turn our back on him, if we stop drawing our life from him, if we abandon the vine, we'll be a dead branch, and, yes, thrown into the fire and burned.
Deep breath.
Often John's gospel is quite dense, difficult to understand. But the message here is quite clear.
We should all strive to bear the fruit that comes from abiding in Jesus, not for ourselves, but for God's glory.
If you don't remain in Jesus, you are in serious trouble. You're also missing out on the abundant life that the creator of life has to offer you.
The challenge this morning is this: bear fruit for God. If you already are, bear more fruit! And prepare to be pruned by the Father at some stage. If you aren't bearing fruit for God, I recommend you give your life to him, so he can give you his life, and you'll never look back.
Viewed
172 times since
00:00 26/08/08
Permanent Link