As the Lord may graciously help
me, I will draw your prayerful attention to John's Gospel and
chapter 15 and verse 2. John's Gospel, chapter 15 and
verse 2. Every branch in me that beareth
not fruit, he taketh away. And every branch that beareth
fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. John's Gospel chapter 15 and
verse 2. We have before us the Lord Jesus
speaking to his disciples as probably he was almost travelling
along the road towards Gethsemane. Because if
you look at the last verse in chapter 14, It says, but that
the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father
gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence. So it seems that they left the
upper room and were on their journey towards the Gethsemane,
where he would go across the book Kidron and then into the
Gethsemane, and there he would plead with his father. in that
garden in preparation for Calvary. These are Jesus' words to his
disciples. They are very solemn words and
yet very comforting words at the same time. And Jesus here
in this chapter is very much dealing with a subject of fruitfulness. And This time of the year, of
course, we're coming up naturally in England to the time of harvest. The farmers have been busy all
the year, as it were, preparing for the harvest time. That is
the time when they can get the crops, harvest the crops, as
God has given them help to do so and growth has taken place. to harvest those crops and then
to sell them and then so that we would have food to eat. It's
a time of harvest and of course we, some of us perhaps, are harvesting
things in their own gardens from the allotment patches or so forth. We have sown seeds and we've
watched them grow slowly and they've come to a point at which
we can eat the lettuces and so forth. We can partake of some
of the things that have grown. There is a bearing of fruit. Well, the Lord Jesus says this
to his disciples, I am the true vine. I am the true vine. This is one of these sayings
of the Lord Jesus, the I am sayings, showing I am that I am was the
name of God. He was the self-existent God.
And Jesus is saying, I am the true thine. In other words, every
other Every other place where you get nourishment, every other
place where you receive supplies of your needs, other than from
Christ, is not the true vine. And it won't do you real, lasting,
eternal good. Think of one of our hymns, hymn
988, verse 1, it says, Thou lovely name, where's thy
seat? Oh, tell me where. Learning,
pleasure, wealth and fame. All cry out. It is not here. Let me ask you this morning,
which vine are you tapping into in your life? Which one of these? Learning, pleasure, wealth Fame. What one, as it were, is most
important to you in your life? Or perhaps they're all important
very much to you. Which one are you trying to receive
your happiness from? Which one is it you're trying
to satisfy your needs from? Jesus says this, I am the true
vine. I am the true source. of happiness, the true source
of life, the true source of fruit bearing. This is about fruit
bearing and it is saying that unless we are part of this vine,
we shall never bear fruit, not to God's honour and to God's
glory. I am the true vine and my father
is the husbandman, or we could say the vine dresser, the one
that goes round and prunes the vine, the one that goes round
and tends it. It's interesting even today,
very much, it's true that vines, I was only looking it up last
night, that it's completely recognised today that if you do not tend
a vine, The ability for it to produce fruit is very limited.
There needs to be a lot of work put in to control the vine, otherwise
it will not be a fruit bearing vine. There needs to be much
work done. My father is the husbandman. He is, as it were, the one that
is to deal with this vine and to make it fruitful. Then we come to our text, every
branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away. This shows clearly the absolutely
vital nature of bearing fruit. This is not an optional extra. It's not, well, if you are a
Christian, then if you could bear fruit as well as being a
Christian, that's beneficial for the church. Jesus is not
saying that at all. Jesus is saying that my church
is made up of fruit bearing branches. In other words, if by God's grace
you do not become a fruit-bearing branch to God's honour and to
God's glory, to show forth His praise, to live a life that glorifies
Him, we need to go into what that means, then you are not part of the
Church. And God has made it very clear.
Jesus has said this. You see, there's these notions
that Jesus was somebody who was so loving and kind and friendly
that he would never say anything harsh or unkind to anybody. Jesus
was very, very forthright. Every branch in me that beareth
not fruit, ye take it away. There's no if and but and maybe. Take it away. The church is to be a God-glorifying
institution. And each member of that church,
each true member, is to be fruit-bearing. There is no place, there is nothing
in the scripture about those who are in the church. When I
mean in the church, I mean as in the one church here below,
the Church of God, not our personal Red Hill Church. There is no place for those in
the church which are not bearing fruit. This is not a new theme
that Jesus started speaking about just before Gethsemane. In fact John the Baptist says
this in Matthew chapter 3 and verse 10, and now also the axe
is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore every tree which
bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the
fire. Categoric, clear, you can't really
be more forthright than that can you? The vital necessity
of fruit. I'm going to go on and explain
what we mean by fruit, because it's very easy for those who
are tender in the things of God to hear these statements and
cut themselves right off. I'm not a fruit-bearing branch,
I can't be classed as that, therefore I'm lost. No. I want to come
and encourage. But you've got to cut out what
God has cut out. And God has cut out those who
are uncaring about their fruitlessness, unconcerned about their state
in Christ, in some way connected with an earthly church. That's
sufficient. Just enough to be joined, to
be associated with it. That's not enough. You would
then be classed as one of these branches which are going to be
taken away. Yes, you're connected with it.
Yes, you know all the people in the church perhaps. Yes, you
know how to behave in an outward way. Yes, you know many outward
things of how to behave as a Christian. But except ye bear fruit, ye
will be taken away. So that was, John said this in
Matthew 3. Jesus says it in Matthew 7 on
the Sermon of the Mount, verse 19. Every tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit is hewn down. This is Matthew 7, verse
19. And cast into the fire wherefore
by their fruits Ye shall know them. This is the evidence of
whether we are the children of God or not. You see, when you
sow seeds, perhaps some people who are much better at gardening
than I am, would be able to look at seeds and say, well that's
a lettuce seed, and that's a beetroot seed, and that's so on, and I
personally wouldn't be able to tell the difference, I don't
know them well enough. But they're not obvious anyway,
when you sow a seed, it doesn't look to me much like a lettuce
when you look at a lettuce seed. Nothing for me to see that it's
a lettuce. But when you sow it in the ground you see, as we
had allotment patch this year and the children have put the
seeds in the ground, it becomes abundantly clear which seeds
went where. In one area the lettuce seeds
got mixed up with the parsnips. And, well, nobody perhaps, well,
apart from the person who was doing it, perhaps knew that this
was going on at the time. But now you can go in the allotment
patch and you can tell clearly what's happened. You can see
that there's a lettuce amongst the parsnips. It's as clear as
anything. I can tell that and I'm not particularly good at
gardening. In other words, as there's a
growth, you see, of that seed, there's a development and it
becomes more and more obvious that that was a lettuce or that
was a parsnip. There is to be a growth. There
is to be a manifestation. And Jesus is saying here that
every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down
and cast into the fire. So there is a need, a vital necessity
to bear fruit. We read in the fifth chapter
of Galatians about a list of the fruit of the Spirit. We look in Galatians chapter
5 and verse 22. But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance, that means self-control. Against such, there
is no law. There is this list of those,
that fruit, the manifestation of the fruit. And you might look
at that list and think, but that surely is impossible for me,
in my sinfulness, in my far-offness, to fulfil this love. this joy,
this peace, this long-suffering. And if you come to that conclusion
as you look at this list, you look at the list of the fruit
that you must bear, and then you look at the inability of
you to bear any of that fruit by nature, and you're only coming to the
conclusion, what Jesus is telling you, in chapter 15 anyway. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except
ye abide in me. So the fruitfulness that is to
come if we are to be those who bear much fruit, those who do
manifest the evidence that we have passed from death unto life. then we must know this fruit
in our lives. And it can only be produced as
we have the Lord Jesus as the vine, and we being the branches. We need to be connected to the
vine and the branch, you see. You could tie a branch up in
a vine. You could make it seem as if
it was part of the vine. But except it's really connected
to the vine, unless it's grafted in, unless it's connected so
that the sap, the benefits can flow into that branch. Except
we have that. You see, the branch will be dead
and it will certainly not be fruitful in the things that it
should be. So Jesus is saying here, Every
branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. That's a solemn, solemn word.
But it's right that we should be shocked. It's right that we
should be concerned about fruit bearing. You see, if I told you
all, it matters not whether you bear fruit or not. It doesn't
matter whether there's any evidence of Christianity in your life.
Just assume you're safe and carry on with your life. Jesus says
nothing of that sort of thing. He constantly wants people to
come to assurance and the evidence that they have the work of God
in them. Not because of some airy fairy thoughts that they
had or some perhaps strange dream that they had one night. Not that God can't use dreams,
but the point I'm making is that the evidence that you are a child
of God, that God has given you this new life, that you are receiving
sap from the vine, is that you are bringing forth fruit. But it's also true to say that
fruit doesn't come immediately. If you set your seeds in the
garden, children are often a bit like
this and I'm afraid I was just like that when I was young. I'm
often pointed out by my family that when I set some carrot seeds
one day, the next day I went along and dug them up and see
how they were growing. I was impatient. I thought that
they would immediately grow into carrots. I had no idea that you
had to wait many days and weeks before there would be the beginnings
of germination and then the beginnings of a root going down and then
the shoot coming up. There was time. So in saying
these words that it's every branch in me Every branch in me that
beareth not fruit ye take it away. It would be terrible if
I did not also point out that there is an appointed time of germination, of taking root
downwards, before there can be the blade, the ear, and the full
corn in the year. There is work to be done, isn't
there, naturally. And you think of a vine, it doesn't
produce fruit, does it, all year round. There's a certain season
of fruitfulness and there's a time when it's much more fruitful
than at other times. So there is a variation and therefore
we should not, as it were, conclude that all is lost if we at this
moment in time cannot see everything about being fruitful. But the
point I'm getting at is, is it our concern to be fruitful? Why are you like a farmer who
is completely unconcerned whether his fields are fruitful or not? Well, you say, if that farmer
is so unconcerned about whether his orchard is fruitful or not,
he won't be in business for very long. He won't ever get good
crops if he's unconcerned. No, there needs to be a right
concern. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh
away. And every branch that beareth fruit, he purges it, that it
may bring forth more fruit. You see there is a work to be
done by this husbandman, by this vinedresser, by a father in heaven,
who lovingly tends to the vine, who is concerned about how the
vine is getting on. The vine is a wonderful illustration
really, you see, of how it is all to be, the nourishment is
all to come from Christ. You take the very famous vine
in Hampton Court, it's got a root that is something like one metre
in diameter, so large is that vine, but it spreads a tremendous
distance but it all comes back. to that one root. It's not many
roots, it's one root, all being supplied, I understand, from
this one root. And tremendous fruitfulness,
but all coming from one stem. And so this picture of how Christ
is the the bearer of all his people. He is the one through
which all the grace flows. He is the one, the only one that
is able to make you a fruit bearing branch. For those who are the Lord's
people, those who humbly can look back in their lives, look
back to times when perhaps the Lord has blessed them, given
them a hope in his mercy perhaps, as they see that the Lord has
done great things for them. As we had in our Sunday school
this morning, in Nehemiah's day, the enemy said, and they perceived,
that this work was wrought of our God. That was made precious
to me as I looked back many years ago now over what the Lord had
done for me. I perceived that this work had
been wrought of our God and that's a great blessing. But as time
goes on you see that we pass through times that are not so
fruitful. We think of the vine and Although
some pruning is done, I think, around the year, the vast majority
of pruning in the vine is done in the wintertime. And I read
that it's something like 90% of the growth that took place
in the summer is cut back. 90%, that's a lot. 90% is removed. Obviously very carefully by the
people who know what they're doing. And if you looked without
a lot of knowledge as to what they were doing, it must seem
as if you're completely ruining the vine. You're taking so much
away. And yet, you see this is all
so that that vine might become fruitful again. And if you do
not do this, I understand, I'm told, then the ability to bear
fruit for next year will be greatly changed. So there is a need,
you see, for the pruning. You see, he purges it, and that
can be translated pruning, but also in the root word, it cleanses
as well. So it's pruning and it's cleansing
and it's purifying. And you see the thought is there
that God is going to use those branches, those people of God
who have, by God's grace, lived to God's honour and glory, have
showed forth his praise in their lives by walking in that love
of Christ, by showing forth his praise. But also you see, Jesus
says in his Sermon on the Mount at the beginning, Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. This is the character
of a true child of God, hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
If you are hungering and thirsting after something, what attitude
do you have when you see water? Or what attitude do you have
when you see food? Are you indifferent to it? Are
you unconcerned whether you are a partaker of it? No. You see people who are really
thirsty. and really hungry. They're desperate
to get food. They're desperate to get supplies.
Does that characterize you spiritually? How concerned are you to be,
to hunger and to thirst after righteousness? You see, this
Father in Heaven that is to prune these fruitful branches. Well
you might think, surely it seems that God is cutting me right
down. Surely it seems that he is against
me. He's no longer for me. He's cutting this. He's cutting
my roots in this direction or shooting in the other. He's taking
away all these things that I thought were necessary. God wants his
people, you see, to drink deeply of one stream, and that's the
stream of his grace. He wants his people to truly
be nourished and cherished from that vine. He doesn't want them
to be drinking from all these other sources, drinking from
these places which will do them no good. That's why he says,
love not the world. He's not just trying to spoil
your fun. He's saying, love not the world,
because if you're drinking from the world and the lusts of it,
you are not drinking from the source, the only source of true
blessing, which is union with Christ. And that's why he says,
love not the world. Because he wants you to be a
fruitful branch. And I go back, is it with you? Do you say, is this a description
of you? Blessed are they that hunger
and thirst after righteousness. Is this what you desire? Those
of us who were here on Friday night, we closed with this hymn
1075. And the third verse says this, O crucify this self that
I, no more but Christ in thee may
live, bid all my vile affections die, nor let one hateful lust
survive, in all things nothing may I see, nothing desire or
seek but thee. Now, probably most of you have
sung that hymn, perhaps many times, and that very verse. Is
it true of you? Are you really saying that? You
see, and if you are, and when the father comes along and starts
pruning you, cutting back those things, love not the world, cutting
back those things which you would think are great in a profession
of faith. He's dealing with you to make
you bear more fruit. You see, I want to speak of this, of the
discipline that the Lord deals with his people. We can think
of discipline as just correcting somebody when they've gone wrong.
If they've done something naughty, they've been disciplined for
it. That is an aspect of discipline. It is right that we should be
reproved if we do what's wrong. And sometimes the Lord does need
to reprove us in our lives if we have gone astray. But in another
sense, discipline is training, it's learning. Learn of me for
I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your
souls. It is to learn of him, it's to be in Christ's school.
And you see the Lord Jesus is dealing with his people to train
them so that they may bring forth much fruit. That is the purpose
you see. I remember one time this was
exceptionally sweet to me. I had walked through at that
time quite some sadnesses and quite some sorrows after I'd
come to know the things of God. I was in a low place you could
say spiritually and I felt that perhaps there had been some fruit
on the vine in years gone by but it seemed that it was all
barren now. Remember It's in the winter that
the husbandman prunes. He prunes us back. He cuts us
down. And, well, all I could see was
being cut off more and more. Less and less fruitfulness seemed
to be. And of course Satan, ever the
accuser of the brethren, would always love to make you believe
that It's not for your good. He would love you to kick against
God's dealings with you and love you to write bitter things against
yourself that you are not a child of God at all. But what was a
tremendous comfort to me under the preaching of the Gospel here
actually was the pointing out of the fact that fruit bearing
was a seasonal thing. And my heart leapt as I suddenly
realised something I'd forgotten. I'd heard it many times before,
no doubt, but in my experience I'd forgotten it. I'd forgotten
that there were seasons in fruit bearing. And we have that beautiful
word in the Song of Solomon. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away, for the winter is over and past, and the singing
of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away. That was a wonderful thrill to
my soul. to realise that after this winter
time, after this pruning, after this cutting back, after this
barrenness, after this coldness, God was doing it because he wants
more fruit. You see, that is exactly what
the farmer does it for. He does it because he wants to
harvest the next year. So he prunes it in the winter
time. He cuts off all the shoots that
are not appropriate and brings that vine down to the bare minimum,
90% perhaps cut off. And we see, well, so much is
lost, in our opinion. But Christ, you see, wants true
fruit. Now what is fruit? Fruit, you see, if you ask the
world, it's external greatness, it's the glory of man, it's what
man thinks of us and how many people are in an external way
glorying in us. It's not the fruit that the Lord
Jesus is talking about here at all. What is it to bear fruit? We went through what those aspects
of the fruit of the Spirit was. But really in another way it
can be summed up in one way, that it is to be Christ-like. It is to be made like Him, to
be, as in Romans 8 it says, to be conformed to the image of
His Son. This, this is what it is to be
fruit-bearing. And I came across a dear elderly
saint, who was a very godly lady. And she said early in her pathway,
after her marriage, she got very ill. And she was for six weeks,
I understand, had to be on her own in her bedroom. She couldn't come out, she wasn't
well enough. And she made this observation
that God showed her in those six weeks that she could glorify
God. Just laying on that bed, in confinement,
she realised that she could glorify God. And this is important, you
see, the man would say, well, if you're away in a bed all on
your own, you can't glorify God there. That's not bearing fruit.
Bearing fruit is being up, out and about. No, it's being like
Christ. And you see what God does with
his people, is he brings them into these winter times, he hides
them, he puts them through many things which will strengthen
them. See if you take somebody who
runs in the Olympics, they don't just think one day that well,
I think I'll go in for the Olympics and then register and then run
the race. You'd say that's ridiculous,
they never win like that, why not? Well, because those who
want to train, those who want to win such a competitive race,
they're disciplining themselves for years. Training and doing
all sorts of exercises to make it possible that they will be
able to win the race. They train themselves greatly.
They go to tremendous extents of self-denial so that they might
possibly be able to win the race. And they do that for a corruptible
crown. They do that for a medal which
won't last forever. God's people are in the school
of Christ to be dealt with. to be wrought upon, to be cut
down from walking in pride. You see, God knows that his people
could not be useful to him if they're walking in pride. If
you walk in pride, you can't glorify God. If you are walking
according to the course of this world, if you're proud, there's
no place, is there? Jesus is a humble way. pride
and self must be brought down and therefore it's vital necessity
for this pruning work to go on. It's vital. I heard of another
illustration of I think I might have used it in the Sunday school
some years back. But it was written about a kite, a kite flying high
in the sky. And there was one, the person
flying that kite had his hands firmly on the controls, holding
that kite. And the kite was speaking and
saying, if only you let go and stop those ropes that pull me
down, you watch how high I would go. Well, you know, if you know
much about kite flying, you know that if you did let go of the
ropes, if you didn't pull that kite down and give it control,
it would soon fall to the ground very, very quickly. Little did
the kite know that those two ropes holding it down were vital
necessity, vitally necessary to be able to fly at all. And
you see, the Lord's dealings with us, his pruning us, his
purging us, are vitally necessary. Now, you may see that they're
getting in the way, your earthly things, they're getting in the
way, getting in the way of what you want to do. But then I come
back to this point. Are you saying, are you hungering,
and thirsting after righteousness. If you are really hungry and
really thirsty for righteousness, then you'll bless the hand that
did this. You'll thank the Lord that he
ever dealt with you, molded you, and took you into his school,
that he did not leave you, cast you off as an unfruitful branch,
but that he dealt with you, not cutting off the branch, but cutting
off all the non-essential, non-fruit-bearing activity that goes on. And you
think in your heart, all the lust, the pomp, the pride of
life, how much that all needs the knife of God to come and
cut off. so that we may live to Him. You
see this is what the hymn writer is saying in 1075, O crucify
this self that I, crucifying wasn't a pleasant experience,
even the Lord Jesus when he was faced with crucifixion knew what
lay before him. He said if it be possible let
this cup pass from me. It wasn't something he naturally
loved. He loved to do his father's will,
but crucifixion was something excruciatingly painful. It wasn't
something he naturally would seek for. But the hymn writer
here is saying, no, crucify this self, that I no more, but Christ
in me may live. So in other words, the hymn writer
is praying this prayer that we are to be thankful if the husbandman
or when the husband comes and purgeth that branch, purifies
us, takes away the dross, takes away all that is against true
fruit-bearing. Fruit-bearing being, not being
great in the eyes of the world, that's not the fruit-bearing
we're talking about. We're being, talking about fruit,
being fruitful as being Christ-like. And what was Christ like? He
was humble. Though he was Lord of all, he
made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant,
made in the likeness of men. and being found in fashion as
a man he humbled himself and became obedient. So he was obedient. He was obedient. And we are to
be obedient to our father's correction and our father's training and
discipline. Not all as it were in anger. We mustn't think that God only
deals with us in this way if he's angry with us. And he says,
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. He loves them, he loves them
too much to leave them, to grow all the weeds and the briars.
But if you think about this in another way, pruning itself doesn't bear fruit,
does it? It doesn't make the plant bear
fruit because you cut off the others, but what it does is it
makes It stops the plant being involved with all the other activities
that it would have been involved with and enables that activity
of fruit bearing to be given the proper place. It's the same
when you think of the sower as he sowed the seeds. He sowed
it on some ground and there was a springing up of the seed, it
looked promising. There was a taking root downwards,
not too far, not too deep, but there was a taking root downwards
a little bit and there was a shoot upwards. But then the briars and the thorns
and the thistles took over that patch. and made it unfruitful,
made that that blade never came to maturity, never bore fruit. You see, but if you took away
all the briars, if you took away all the weeds in an allotment
patch but you didn't have any actual fruit growing there, it
wouldn't make fruit, would it? No, God taking away these things,
so taking away in itself, the fruit comes from union to Christ. It's not the pruning that makes
the fruit, it's union with Christ, and it's the Father who chops
off all the bits, all the parts, the 90% of us which is self,
as it were, even of those who know the Lord. We've got so much indwelling sin, so much that
still is wrong, so much that needs to be kept down, something
that needs to be disciplined, something that needs to be dealt
with so that we can be fruit bearing branches. Well, may the
Lord give us each, by grace, a true desire to be fruitful. See, if you haven't got a desire
to be fruitful, it's really serious. It's really serious. If you haven't
got a desire to be fruitful, well may the Lord give that desire,
because He is able to change the heart, able to renew the
will, and that's why we pray. We are commanded to pray for
one another, to pray for our children, to pray for our loved
ones, that the Lord would put in their hearts a desire for
something that they never once wanted. You see, Jesus is described
in Isaiah 53 as a root. out of the dry ground. It's not
something that we would naturally desire, and Christ, this vine,
being united to Christ in this vine is not what this world calls
good or great. And yet, to the eyes of one who
have been wrought upon by the Holy Spirit, they see that this
pathway is a pathway of life. Union with Christ, feeding out
of his finished work, Not producing fruits on their own, by their
own means, no. No, they're to be fruit-bearing
branches. But the other thing to take away
is this vital necessity of fruit. It will be in its season, so
we're not to, as it were, be too despondent when the first
sign of a seed comes up that it has not yet got an apple growing
on this tree, the first shoot that comes out the ground. No,
there is to be a time. And yet there is to be a looking
for that fruit, a desiring to bear fruit, and a realization
if there is no fruit, there is nothing that glorifies God in
your life. So your life is not being lived
to God's glory. That is not the number one desire
in your life. And Jesus says, every branch
in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. But every branch
that beareth fruit, he purgeth it. that it may bring forth more
fruit. The Lord is dealing with us and
may it be that we may become more fruitful rather than be
removed from being associated with the Church of God but never
really being one of its members. May the Lord add his blessing.