when we are in some specific
passages of scripture, it's very easy for us to, I don't know,
keep going, lose sight, look at it and go, hey, we've been
over this, let's just move on. But in reality, there's a lot
here in John 15. There's some things that I want
to approach, not necessarily from the point of doctrine. I
don't want to bog down too much in doctrinal things, but I do
want to take time out to show you some of the allusions of
the Old Testament. That's why I read Psalm 80 this
morning. If you go to Psalm 80 first,
let's go there so that I can just point out to you a couple
of things. Psalm 80. Sorry, I should have told you
that to begin with. In verse 8 we see in Psalm 80
where it says, you drove a vine out of Egypt. You drove the nations
and planted it. So here what we see is that the
Old Testament and there are many other areas where the Old Testament
will show that Israel is akin to a vine in that metaphor. Though
vineyards are very popular in the first century, Greek and
Jewish cultures alike, There was a special place in Israel's
heart to be considered the vine of God. There's a special place
in their heart. And so I want to revisit that
today as I move into verse 8 of chapter 15 because it is there
it says that God is glorified, the Father is glorified, and
I want to show the comparison. But let's continue to look at
Psalm 80. You drove out a vine from Egypt
and you planted it. You drove out the nations and
you planted it. You cleared the ground for it. It took deep root
and filled the land. The mountains were covered. Mighty
cedars were covered with its branches. It sent out its branches
to the sea and the shoots to the river. Why then have you
broken down its walls?" So now we see that even The psalmist
understood that Israel was destroyed. We see historically that Israel
was divided and that only Judah remained. We see that even now,
as we look back into the first century, that the whole purpose
of Israel from the start to finish was to point to Christ as a shadow.
Every element, every person, every promise, it was all to
point to Christ as a shadow. And God has brought the truth.
Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass along
the way may pluck its fruit? The boar ravages it, verse 13,
and all that move in the field feed upon it. Turn again, O God
of hosts, look down from heaven and see, have regard for the
vine. Now this is the call of the psalmist.
He's saying, would you please have mercy? Would you have favor
toward us? We are your vine, the stalk that your right hand
planted. for the Son whom you made strong
for yourself. So now all of a sudden we see
an illusion there back to Psalm 80 when Jesus, and even other
places in the Old Testament, where Jesus is the Son of God,
where Jesus is at the right hand. So when Jesus claims to be the
Son, when Jesus claims to be the vine, he is usurping Israel. He is usurping Israel. They have
burned it with fire, they have cut it down, may they perish
at the rebuke of your face, but let your hand be on the man of
your right hand." Now all of a sudden in verse 17 of Psalm
80, we see a Christological picture. The man who is at your right
hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself.
And I don't want to use the term because it brings, it connotes
a whole lot of different thoughts when I say things like this,
but there is a replacement doctrine here. There's a replacement teaching
when it comes to Israel and to what John is showing Jesus is
teaching in John 15. So now let's go to John 15 and
look at the first. Oh goodness, let's do the first
13 verses. I am the true vine and my father
is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does
not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear
fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean
because of the word that I've given you, that I've spoken to
you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless
you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in Me, and I in
him, he, it is that bears much fruit. For apart from Me you
can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me,
he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches
are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide
in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it
will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified,
that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my
love. 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. These things I have spoken to
you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that
you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no
one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. And then Jesus says, you are
my friends if you do what I command. And then he goes on, but we'll
deal with that next week. What are we supposed to see here?
Well, last week we saw very clearly that Jesus as the vine is the
life giver. He is the source of life. He
is the one who draws us to life or brings us to life. The Father
gives us to him and sets us upon him. We don't want to take so
literal the doctrine of this imagery. to the point where we
have to go, everything that we know about vines, we can relate
it to Jesus. Does that make sense? That's
not what a metaphor is for. It's not supposed to give us
an exact imprint of teaching. It's not supposed to give us
solid theology. It's supposed to undergird and express that
which has already been taught. Jesus has already said this.
He's already said in John 3, you must be born again. He's
already said in John 4, you know, He's already shown that this
Samaritan woman was in Christ, in Him. It wasn't about the worship
of the temple. In John chapter 2, He's already
said, you destroy the temple and in three days I will build
it up again. He's already shown that He's greater than the temple,
that the temple in itself as an instrument, as a physical
presence of God in picture, not in reality, is fulfilled in Jesus
Christ who is the God-man, God with us, Emmanuel. And the list
goes on and on and on. And everywhere you look, you
see Jesus saying that He is the Son of God, He is God, And He
came to do the will of God to redeem His people from their
sins and He stands alone in those claims. He stands alone. Where
Israel, the whole time, has been doing what? What have the Jews
been doing? The Jews have been saying, but
we're Abraham's people. We're Moses' people. We're riding
in on the shoulders of Abraham and Sinai. We are okay with God. Look at us! Look at how we are. Look at how we speak. Look at
how we teach. And the very people who stood on these principles,
on this ideology, on this theology, Jesus would call them brood of
vipers. He would call them dogs. He would
call them devils. He would call them the children
of Satan. He would say that they are not His, therefore they could
not come to see Him. Jesus stands alone in anything
that we add to Christ is a heresy. When we add our will to Christ,
it's an error. It's heresy. When we add our
works to Christ, it's a heresy. And it's so hard for the human
body, for the human mind, for the human condition, even we
who are converted and know that as an absolute hope that it is
only Christ, even we sort of cringe and go, yeah, but what
about, aren't we supposed to? Don't we need to? Isn't there
room for? Are we giving license? And, you
know, so on. No! There is no room for the
flesh. There is no hope in the flesh.
There is no hope in obedience. There is no hope in the freedom
of our will. There is no hope in our own love for Jesus. But yet, isn't it easy to take
these principles, isn't it easy to take these small little conditional
if-then-you, if-then-you, out of context and make them a doctrine
in themselves? That is why there are so many
different iterations of Baptist theology and Protestant theology
and Evangelical theology when it comes to the Gospel. I read
an article yesterday of a Sovereign Grace Church. They have that
as part of their descriptive. We're a Sovereign Grace Church. And yet they sat right there
and I clicked through and read the documents on salvation. Salvation
is by faith alone, which is a little bit backwards, isn't it? It's
by grace alone. But it's faith, faith, faith. That's fine. You
got faith alone. Sola Fide. Let's hammer on it. Then, It's
faith alone in the finished work of Jesus, then fruitfully evidenced
and secured through our obedience. It's garbage. It's garbage. And I encourage you, church,
for those of you who aren't here on midweek, we've finished Romans. If you
don't hear any of the Roman sermons throughout all 73 of them, you
need to listen to Wednesday nights. I basically sat up here and gave
42 minutes of examples of how we have never followed the law
one day. That's it. We've never obeyed. Nobody in
human flesh except the God-man has ever obeyed God one minute.
Well, now Abraham went. Abraham's obedience wasn't full.
So Abraham did not obey. See how we play it? Well, I did
good today. Well, here's you a cookie. What
does Jesus say about our duty? Are we rewarded for our duty?
Do we earn brownie points with the Lord when we do our duty?
Is God up there going, meany, meany, meany, meany, ooh, nice
guy, meany, nice guy, ooh, handing out candy corns this time of
year, Reformation Day? What's he doing? He has those
whom he loves and are perfect in Christ, and he has those whom
he does not love, and he is just in their reprobation. We need to understand the gospel,
beloved. We need to understand the gospel, just like our children
are not cut off from us when they don't do what we want them
to. And we discipline them to grow them and to correct them.
Discipline is not punitive. That's something we as parents
need to get in our mind. We don't punish our children, we correct
our children. And whether we do it with a stick,
sword, knife, blowtorch, or timeout chair, it doesn't matter. And
that's a joke. Here's all the defects going.
We're going to Grace Truth next week. I mean, you know, let's
check them for burns. It's just a joke, but I joked
like that 15 years ago and got a lot of nasty letters, so I'll
just let it go. They're never not our children.
So, if we focused in on this text, And we keep it in the context,
the same upper room, Lord, Last Supper dialogue with His disciples. Those who would pin this very
gospel, the very letters that we've been studying, to teach
us about the obedience of faith, our everlasting hope who is in
Christ, who is Christ. In verse 8 it says, By this my
Father is glorified. Now, by this, He specifically
says something there, that you bear much fruit, and so prove
to be my disciples. All right, let's take verse eight
and put it in a vacuum, and now what does it do? We're to prove
that we are the disciples of Jesus by bearing fruit, and in doing
that, the Father is glorified. Now what questions are there
in your mind? Number one, what does it mean
to be a disciple of Christ? Is that being born again? No.
It's not. It's not having eternal life.
Being a disciple of Christ is growing in Christ, following
after Christ, learning Christ. God brings us to life and then
we begin the process of growing. That's why we're commanded by
the apostles to be in the assembly. Part of the main reason is that
we grow together in the teaching, hearing, and then the teaching
to each other, the word, the scripture, the truth. So what
does it mean to be a disciple? Following the commands of Christ.
What are the commands of Christ? He gives it to us. That's what's
so beautiful. This passage has everything we need to answer
all those questions. Proving that you're my disciples.
What's the moniker? What is the mark? What is the
banner of the body of Christ? What's the single most important
banner? Believing in the grace of God through Christ alone by
faith for our righteousness. That's it. Then what's the second? What's the second thing that
Christ then commands us to have? To love each other. To love each
other. Why? Because he loves the Father
and the Father loves him and he loves us. That's why. He has
first loved us, so He wants us to love Him. Why? You'll see
it. You'll see why. The Father is
glorified. What does it mean that the Father
is glorified? Christ lived for the sake of the glory of the
Father. Everything He said, listen to what I'm about to say to you,
because we're gonna deal with it a little bit tonight on Theology on Call.
Christ obeys the Father to the cross. Everything that Christ
did, everything that Christ said, everything that Christ desired
was for the purpose of the cross. I want you to hear that. So that
when we understand Christ's teaching and the apostles teaching about
the obedience of Jesus, it is all and always and only everything
he ever was unto the cross. He made himself a slave, obedient. How? Obedient unto death, even
on a cross. That's what Paul says to the
Philippians. So we don't need to philosophically divide the
segmentation or the category distinctions of what is types
of obedience. Who cares? The Bible doesn't
teach it that way. Christ, in all of his purposes,
obeyed the Father for the cross, for the purpose of atoning for
his sins. And then Christ raised himself
to life because he was worthy, not of death, but of life. And we are clean, beloved. These
disciples are clean. Judas has left the building.
The reprobate is gone. Jesus says, you are clean because
of the word that I've spoken to you. You are clean because
I have washed you. And I know Peter was thinking,
he didn't wash me. I told him to wash my whole body,
but he only washed my feet. I told him. I might have to get
him tomorrow. Maybe he'll wash me all over
and then I'll really be clean. I mean, Peter was just so maniacal
in his precision, but yet he couldn't see it clearly. That's
how we are sometimes. We don't see it clearly, but
we read into what the culture has said, which is carried along
by the Prince of the Power of the Air. You're not in the Lord
if you do X, Y, Z. You can't be a true Christian
if you think X, Y, Z. If you don't have a full love
for Jesus, what does that even look like? Jesus gives us the
easy answer. When we love Him, it's when we're
loving each other. It's not about how we feel or
what we think or what we're looking toward or what we're longing
for. It's not about being up every morning at 4 a.m. just
singing praises, can't wait for the day of Jesus Christ. Nothing
wrong with that, but what about when we don't do that? What about
when our shoes or our eyeglasses are more important than the Word
of God? What about when our health or
our marriage or or our our mindset is just more important than the
body of Christ? How am I loving the Lord today?
You know, what's really awesome is that he loves me. So I will never be plucked from
his hand, he will never cast me aside. And in that doctrine,
God does great things. He gives me the encouragement
and the power and the humility to serve somebody else. You know
what it's like for my house? The doorbell rings. The Holy Spirit brings something
to my conscience that I can't ignore. I have to pray for somebody
else. I have to counsel with somebody
else. I have to consider someone else. I remember many times, you know,
people have said, and I'm not saying this in a sense that you
might take it, but people have said, it must be nice to just
be able to just read and study project doctrines all day long.
Well, I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of things I'd love
to read, write, and prepare, but my call has put me in the
Word for the sake of the joy of you. And that gives me great
joy. Remember how I've been saying
recently that our relationship with Jesus is directly, it correlates
one-to-one with our intimacy with the Bible? And then in an unpopular mathematic
style, it also equates one-to-one in our relationship with one
another? Has nothing to do, our relationship
and it growing and our love for Christ has nothing to do with
the fact that we are either, it's not related to whether or
not we're born again or not. If we're not born again, we will
definitely, even if we try to love him, or even if we love
each other, it's just dead works. It's dead works, it's worthless.
We say, well I know I'm a Christian because I'm loving my neighbor,
but we're loving my neighbor because I want to love myself. We're never going to get it right,
beloved. And so at the end of the day, at the end of every
day, when we look in the mirror of our soul, we see that it is
all about what Christ has done in his love for us. And Christ's
love for the father is shown in his obedience to die for his
people, for his sinners, for sinners, for his friends who
were counted as friends, even while they were enemies. So this vine language, as we
saw in Psalm 80, let me get to the points. In a general sense,
this is an Old Testament. This means more to a Jew than
it does to a Greek. It means more to someone who
grew up in a Hebrew household than it does to someone who grew
up in Corinth, who was a Corinthian by birth and genealogy. Yeah,
they all understood, well, there's a bunch of vines out there, my
daddy makes me prune them, we gotta get grapes, we gotta sell
grapes, we gotta make wine, sort of the commodity of the day.
But as you saw in Psalm 80, and there are, I looked last week,
there are probably 20 other references where Israel is considered a
vine in the Old Testament. the illusion of that, the metaphor
of that, the picture of that and so in the Old Testament since
Israel is seen as a vine so when Jesus says the words I am the
true vine he's erasing a whole lot of cultural theology he's
erasing a lot of improper teaching unbalanced or imbalanced understanding
of God's work Jesus is the true vine. Israel, Israelite people,
Hebrew people are not the true vine. And that was a shock to
them. It was a shock to them that Abraham
wasn't good enough to usher them into the presence of God. That
Moses wasn't good enough to usher them into the presence of God.
That the promise to those men and what they stood for, Jesus
rebukes them in the greatest of ways. Before Abraham was,
I am. Moses wrote of me. Now that's
taken it a step. I mean, that's taken it. That's
taken a real hard line to rebuke them. Just like Jesus is the
temple. Just like Jesus is the better
bridegroom. Just like Jesus is the mercy seat. We need to understand
the narrative of history, especially the Old Testament, as it was
intended to be understood. That only through divine revelation
can we grasp these things. Jesus is the temple of God. Jesus
is divine. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus
is the living water. Jesus is God. The I am God. not just any old God, not just
a mighty man. He is the God of Hebrew Scripture. Jesus is the true vine, not Israel.
They were attached to the vine in a way of covenant, temporarily,
so that that picture of that temporal covenant should show
the reality of what Jesus did for his people. I think it is
why Paul had to be the apostle to the
Gentiles. How fitting for a Sanhedrin member
to be the proselytite to the Gentiles. I find it amazing. There's no greater picture there.
Because in everything that Saul was as a Pharisee was passionately
and with great zeal a defender of the faith of Israel. of the
God of Israel, of the Messiah of Israel, yet he couldn't see
it. And then when God the Son opened
his eyes and met with him on the road to Damascus and saved
him without his will, without his permission, Paul's passion
was for God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But the God that he
thought was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was not the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus is the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. And Saul couldn't see it. Why?
Because he was blind spiritually. So Jesus saw him. He couldn't
find Jesus. Jesus found him. He didn't want
Jesus. Jesus wanted him. And out of that crowd, do you
know Saul's conversion is even a picture of sovereign grace?
Free and sovereign grace. Out of the whole stack of folks
there, he was the only one saved. He's the only one who could hear
the voice of Christ. He's the only one who could see
the face of Christ. And everybody else said, some
angels or some thunder or something. Paul fell off his horse and bumped
his head, now he's blind. No, Paul could see for the first
time in his life. And he immediately went to where he was going, not
to arrest them, but to join them. And they're like, I don't think
so, Saul. We weren't born last night. We don't believe you. But God purposed it. See, Israel
was never meant to be God's glory revealed. The nation of Israel
was never meant to be God's glory revealed. By this, my father
is glorified. That I am the vine and you are
the branches. Those who are connected to me who do not produce the
fruit that is required of them are cut away. I'm going to talk
about that in a minute. But in this sense now, I want
you to realize also that this was a strike against the heart
of Israel. They were not meant to be God's
glory revealed. Jesus is the glory of the Father. He is the one who shows everything
that there is to know about God. I think it was last week that
I had the question, I have a friend who's extremely excited about
God and is zealous about God and he's always talking about
God and he's always talking about how God's changed his life and
how God's given him so many blessings and I've got this God, that God,
the other, but he never ever in the history of our conversations
has ever said anything about Jesus. And he has no gospel testimony
in his constant praising. My response to that is push the
issue and if he can't talk about his righteousness being in Christ,
he's not born again. It's just because we get on fire
for cleaning up our lives and call it God's work doesn't mean
that it's God's work. You think the devil's in the
business of making people live in debauchery? No. He's in the
business of being an angel of light. He poses as Christ. He poses as God. Remember years
and years ago I did that little series, I've since taken it down,
but the devil in the pulpit, I didn't like the way it really
focused on certain things, but that's the truth. The enemy,
God has willed and purposed the enemy's soldiers to be pastors,
to be teachers, to be congregationalists, to be evangelicals. It's not
just the cults who are the workers of iniquity. It wasn't the cult
of Jesus' day, it was the Jews of Jesus' day who were the workers
of iniquity. We need to keep that in mind,
beloved. Israel was never meant to be God's glory revealed. Christ
is. Israel was never meant to be God's people revealed. The
church is. The body of Christ, the assembled
ones, we the saints who have been purchased by the blood of
Christ, we are the ones who are supposed to reveal the work of
Christ. First and foremost, by the obedience
of faith that we proclaim, by grace alone do we stand before
God righteous. I've said this a thousand times
and I'm preaching to the choir and it doesn't really matter
that I say it again, but it's in my heart so I say it one more
time. You need to understand that the gospel is not what will
you do with what you heard with Christ. And I used to say that. I remember
being in my youth, 18, 19 years old, and I just sort of picked
that phrase up from these Extremely powerful orators now, you've
heard what Christ has done now. What are you gonna do with it?
You ever heard that? It's garbage God doesn't care what you do
with it Well now you're saying you don't have to believe have
I said that don't put words in my mouth. I He's going to repeat
what the scriptures say. Christ has revealed Himself to
be the Son of God who saves the people of God through His finished
work. Ta-da! Now He commands, He commands
everyone everywhere to change the way they think about righteousness
and believe in what He just said He accomplished. Simple gospel. Simple grace. Yet it's impossible for us to
grasp, isn't it? We've got to have some kind of
response. That's what the culture would say. Well, that isn't what
Jesus is saying here. And that's why it's so easy for
me and others like us to fall prey to this idea that, oh, he's
talking about the law. He's talking about the Ten Commandments.
You've got to obey the Ten Commandments. Well, go ahead on. Let me see
how you're doing. I want you to keep a journal starting now.
And I want you to go ahead and write in, I violated the first
commandment by starting this journal. I violated the second commandment
by starting this journal. And I'm a liar. Because anytime
I write down that I've obeyed God rightly, I'm lying about
that. But yet, nowhere in that is there
someone saying, now you just go and sin like you want to.
You just do all that evil stuff. You just fulfill that flesh all
you want. No, the admonition is fight it. Why? Because you're in Christ. You're
dead to sin. Sin has died. Sin has no power
over you. It's been killed. Why is it alive? Because our
flesh loves it. Our flesh loves it, whatever
it might be, whatever it might be. And we are to together as
we learn and grow in grace by the will of God in his desires
and time, we can help each other in our struggle over sin. But
the only true help we ever will need is that Christ died for
it. The grave has no power. Has no power. Israel was never meant to be
God's salvation revealed. They were all pictures of the
person and the work of Jesus, who is the Messiah, the Christ.
Jesus is divine. I want you to get this picture
in your head too. Jesus is the vine. He talks about vines and
branches, all this kind of stuff. Paul says, don't you know you
are the temple of the Holy Spirit? But yet we see Jesus' revelation
to John, the apocalypse, the revealed things to John. He says
that we are the pillars. The imagery there that we are
the pillars in the temple. Who's the temple? Jesus. Who's
the vine? The whole thing? Jesus. Jesus is the whole vine. He's the vine, He's the branch,
He's the fruit, He's everything. It's all Him. Which is why that
other picture, that other metaphor of us being the body of Christ,
Jesus is not just the head floating around. Where's my body? Hurry up guys, I need to go to
the bathroom. I mean, you know, He's Himself, He's full. And yet when we are in Him, we
are found in Him. We are found in His Word. We
are baptized. That means we are submerged into
Him. He is in us. His work is our
hope. For when Christ was judged by
the Father, and He took on the guilt of His people's sins, God
the Father crushed Him for, what does Isaiah say? What does God
say through Isaiah? Our sins. Our iniquities. And by His stripes, we are healed. Jesus didn't need healing. Jesus
wasn't a sinner. He took on the guilt of sinners
and He buried the consequences. And they stayed buried. No condemnation. So Jesus is
the vine. He's not just the trunk. He's
the whole thing. So that the work of Christ, when we proclaim,
we believe in Christ, we hold fast to Christ, He is our righteousness
and our wisdom and our sanctification. When we profess that Christ alone
is our life, we are saying that it's not I that lives, but Christ
that lives within me. When we say we're a branch on
the vine, we're not taking any credit for being in the vine.
We're actually recognizing that the vine and everything in it
is Christ and we're found in Him. But it's so easy when we go,
would you just accept Jesus? What does that even mean? Accept
Him as what? Santa? Accept Him as what? Savior? What does that mean? Well, just
receive him. What's he doing? Where is he
that you can receive him? Where is he that he's offering
anything for you to receive? Well, just ask. For what? I'm serious. And you know what?
People who hold to these things, they can't answer those questions.
They're dumbfounded when I just follow up with just a little
bit. They're dumbfounded. They cannot answer them. And apologists on
this traditional end, They sound like buffoons. They cannot answer. Your hope is in what you've become.
Your hope is in what you've done. Your hope is in how you've responded. Where is your hope? If it is
not in Christ, it is not hope. You abide in Christ by faith.
We learn that we're the branches and we learn the branches what
they are. But we need to see clearly the point is that Jesus
is our life. To live is Christ. And true life is lived by faith
alone in Christ. The fruit of the vine in this
passage then is the next question that comes to my mind, and I
know you may not be following this. It doesn't matter if you
follow the questions or not. Good teaching is not outlined. Unless it's going to be on a
test, then we make it easy. My father is glorified that you
bear much fruit. What is the fruit? That's my first. What
does it mean to be a disciple? And the second is what is a fruit?
What is the fruit? Matthew seven pops into my head
where Jesus says, well, you'll know them by their fruit. Who
is them? I thought about having a service. about them, because every time
somebody asserts something in my house, I say, where'd you,
where'd you learn that? Well, that's what they say. I'm like, who are they?
I just love to have a website with like, we are they, or something
like that, and just have the answers to everything. Every
absurd assertion that's ever been done, you can just look
it up. It could be the parallel to the,
I don't know, to the Luther insults page or something. The only theologian that actually
penned the word fart in a letter that I know of. Crazy guy. What is the fruit? So Matthew
7, Jesus says, they, you will know them by their fruit, by
the fruit. What is the fruit? What's the
context? Here's a fruit salad. Is it? Why are there tomatoes
in it? What's the fruit? Is it a fruit salad? You ever
gone to a restaurant and added the side of fruit or the fruit
salad and it's just like grapes? That is just sinful. Don't call
that a salad, call it a bowl of grapes. Or maybe grapes with
one piece of cantaloupe that's so raw, so not ripe, that you
could throw it at the waitress and get accused for assault. That's not fruit. So what constitutes
a fruit? What constitutes fruit salad?
What constitutes the fruitfulness of being attached to the vine?
What is it? Well, Jesus in Matthew 7 says
you'll know them by their fruits and the context there is that
false teachers who were living amongst the saints will have
the fruit of lies, false doctrine. Jude does deal with some facts
that some of the false teachers there will have what? Sinfulness. They were actually given unto
sensuality. Sexual sins. Just like some of
the Corinthians and Paul corrects that. How does he correct it?
Church discipline. James and John deal with the
fact that there's some fruit of some people amongst them that
are brothers. They're just unloving and he
says you need to deal with it. But what's the fruit here? The fruit of the vine in this
passage is successful prayer. Did you get that? Whatever you
ask in my name, I will do it. That's over in chapter 14. If you love me, you'll keep my
commandments. He's already commanded, love one another. And when you
feel like you can't do what I've asked you to do, I'm going to
give a helper. Because isn't it easy to love
when you're together with loving people? I mean, when you've got
a forgiving person, no matter how mad you are with somebody
else in the room, that forgiving person can sort of just come
along and like a breath of fresh air, just sort of get you into
the attitude of forgiveness. Just, you know, just blow right
on by us, it's OK. Remember how we've sinned against
the Lord? Remember the love of God for us? Remember that Christ
took our iniquities on himself and died on the cross? Remember,
you know, I've been hurt that same way. You know, I forgave
my husband's murder. I mean, that kind of stuff. You
see those all the time, right? You're like, how in the world?
What Jesus is saying, if you ask, And these disciples were
thinking, how are we going to love each other? How are we going
to make it? What are we going to do? The Helper, God the Holy
Spirit, is going to come. You are not going to be left
as orphans. You are clean. You are in me, and I am in you,
and I am in the Father, and He is in me. We are all one big
body. We are all one big happy family,
and I have bought you, and I'm going to buy you, and I've washed
you, and I'm going to wash you, because we know we haven't been
to the cross yet. But all this, He's saying, but I want you to
love me too. I want you to express your love for me in this way.
Love one another, please. Do this." And he's not saying,
please, I'm just being overly mushy. He's commanding them to
love one another. That's how you love me, love
one another. I mean, as a father, isn't it
one of the greatest legacies I could leave? So my children
love each other. I don't want a fractured home.
I don't want to be on my deathbed when I'm 140 years old and see
my children fighting in front of me, and my great-great-great-great-grandchildren
fighting. I mean, you know, I doubt I'll live that long. Who knows? And the best way they can love
me is to love each other. That's sort of what Jesus is
saying. When you do this, you're actually physically loving me.
You're loving me. The Holy Spirit will help you
do that. The Holy Spirit will bring everything I've ever taught you
to mind. Understand this. There is no claim on me. Though
I'm going to die, it is for the sake of your joy. And I'm going
to tell you right now that you will not be separated from me
because you are the branches and I'm the vine. But there's
a lot of people who thought they were in the vine. And this is
the imagery we talked about. If you abide in me, and my words
abide in you, verse 7, ask anything you want, and it will be done
for you. By this is my Father glorified,
that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.
What greater fruit is there than faith? And how does faith play
out? Is it a one-time thing? Is it
all of a sudden, you know, when we hear the gospel for the first
time, we go, oh my goodness, I believe, hallelujah. Never
think about it again. No, faith then is the operative
reality of our lives from now on. And one of the elemental
realities of faith is what? That we depend upon the Lord. And we're constantly dependent
upon the Lord's work. We must depend upon the gospel. And then if there's anything
else going on in our lives, we must depend upon the Lord's sovereignty
and His will for those same things. How are we expressing that dependency? By asking the Lord to intervene
and that His will be done. So the Father is glorified when
we submit ourselves in prayer to the Father. The Father is
glorified. The fruitfulness of abiding in
Christ is that we hold fast to Christ. And in doing so, we have
a natural, a supernatural tendency to trust in the Lord in all things. Not just salvation. All things. So the context here is successful
prayer. And what that points to is the
necessity of the divine work in our lives for the sake of
faith and for the sake of ministry. That's what's happening here.
For the sake of faith that we hold fast, we don't give up,
we don't just quit believing. It's not going to happen. And
for the sake of continuing to live out our lives in Christ,
for the sake of the ministry that God's called us to. We all
have a role to do in ministry. It's not about positions or titles
in the institution. It's about persons and relationships
amongst the body. Always, always is. There's no
such thing as a ministry position. It's a ministry responsibility
to someone. So you and I are the branches.
Christ is the vine, but he's the whole vine. So then on that
side, then we can say, well, we're actually the fruit of Jesus,
aren't we? We're the grapes. Christ is just, we're the fruit.
And the prayers are fruit, and faith is fruit, and all sorts
of things are fruit. And even when it wanes, Even when we have
this little twig over here and the fruit starts to die or never
grows, the Father doesn't cut us away from Christ. He just
prunes it. He just prunes it. And then we
become healthier, become stronger. And what is pruning? Do you think
pruning is easy? Pruning is suffering. We grow
in our suffering. We grow when we have to believe
and trust in the Lord. If God just sort of went poof,
life is easy now, there would be no proclamation of the gospel,
there would be no prayer, there would be no true worship, there
would be no real intimacy. We'd just pat each other on the
back and give high fives and walk out and we'd just sing kumbaya
to the river flooded. I mean it would just be, which
might not be too far. We're the fruit of Jesus. We
have the power of Christ. And we are remaining in Christ.
See, last week we talked about abiding in his person, abiding
in Christ, which means we abide in his person. We abide in his
work. We abide in his truth. We abide in his word. And that
is to hold fast by faith. The same thing in that is to
obey, obey the commandment. This commandment. Because in verse 9, as the Father
has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love. So now
Jesus has given us a couple of things. And I'll talk about them
again in the middle, at the end. But he says, abide in me. Abide in my love. Abide in my
joy, he'll say in a minute. Abide in my peace. My peace I give you, my love
I give you, my joy I give you. So even when we see these things
in our lives, it is the work of Christ. But never are these
things the measurable hope. Christ is our hope. We are in
Him. And so to remain in Christ is
to hold fast by faith. It is to know and understand
this truth. It is to conform to the will
of God. Get this. Thy will be done in prayer. It's
our desire above and beyond our flesh. This is a vital or a spiritual
life of great vitality. That's a better way of putting
it. A living and active faith. A living faith. A loving faith. A learning faith. Other L's we
could get through. I mean, this is it. This is the
work of the church. This is what we're supposed to
be doing. And it's all by faith. We're not supposed to try to
infuse our own cultural expectations of what fruit is and what abiding
is and all of these things. And listen, I have friends who
I respect greatly who cannot get past what I'm saying right
now. Yet the context here, they will say, oh Jesus is changing
the subject. Really? Hand this to a fourth
grader and ask him to read the whole chapter and ask him if
there's two themes there. If there's more than one subject.
If Jesus is changing gears. He's not changing gears. He's
staying there. Why? Because he picks it back
up. He's repeating himself over and over and over again. So by
this is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit and prove
to be my disciples. See, we are redeemed in faith and this is
the fruit of the work of Jesus. We're redeemed. We remain in
the faith. This is the fruit of the Father's
will. He will not allow us to be cast away. We request in faith. We pray in faith. The fruit of
the Spirit. We rest in faith. We hope in
faith. We long in faith. This is what
prayer does. It subjects everything we are
and all that we desire to the will of the Father. But the church,
beloved, we never rot in failure. There's a lot of ways of explaining
this, but we never rot in failure. We are alive, we are not dead.
We are not going to be cut off. And because we are alive and
we will not rot and we will not fail, we need to live accordingly.
Though it seems like that, though it smells like that, though it
feels like that sometimes, we need to live accordingly, by
faith. And the motivator of that is found in verse 9. As the Father
has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. Remain
in my love. Like Paul would say to the Thessalonians,
keep yourself in the love of God. Now how in the world are
we supposed to do that? By utter dependence on the Lord. The love of God is what? Now see, you think I'm being
smart and I've figured something out. John, Jesus says it the
next phrase, like verse 12. I'm not smart. I can just remember
what I read a minute ago. We abide when we maintain, when
we hold fast to believing in the love of God for us in Christ.
We hold fast, we believe the love of God. Why did God kill
the Son for His people? Because of His love for us. Why
did Christ obey the Father? Because of His love for Him.
Because of His love for us. So our love for Christ is first
and foremost that we hold fast to Him. Christ says in verse
9, has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. This is
a finished and complete love. I have loved you. It is done. It will never stop. It is effectual. It has brought
them to the vine. It has given them life. It has
attached them to the source of hope and life, provided in them
fruit, exposed them to the glory of God the Father. And it keeps
us there. It keeps us there. The love of
God keeps us there. Ephesians chapter 2. It talks about the love of God
as kindness for us, why we were still dead in our sins and trespasses.
God loved us. Loved us, Christ loved us and
gave himself for us. Now we're starting to see the
answer of this dependence, of this fruitfulness, of this faith
that we have in the Lord and his love. And that is a compelling
power in our lives to really care enough about loving one
another, right? But it's never motivated by the
fear of being cut off and burned. It's always motivated by the
fact that we've been attached. We have life. We've been loved. How can we not love someone else? It's ridiculous in a logical
sense. But in a supernatural way, we
understand it. We've been bought and secured
in Christ. Then he goes on. If you keep
my commandments, you will abide in my love. If you do what I'm
asking you to do, you will feel My love, you will be in the presence
of My love, you will understand My love, your faith will be strengthened
to understand this, to see it, to live it out. Just as I have kept My Father's
commandments and abide in His love. It doesn't say I'll love
you if you obey Me. The Bible teaches that God loved
the Son, the Father loved the Son without measure. In other
words, He gives the Spirit without measure. He loves the Son. It
can't be measured. It's so much. It's all of the
love that God is, He puts in the Son. All that the Son is
and all the love that the Son has, He glorifies the Father
in that love through dying for His enemies to make them His
friends because He loves them. So I've kept my father's commands
and in that you see me, you see me walking in the love of my
father. And when I die for you, you see me walking in my love
for you. And when you love each other, I see you walking in your
love for me. But what about that burning?
Well, look at verse 12 there. Well, verse 10. If you keep my
commandments, you will abide in my love just as I've kept
my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things, verse 11,
I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your
joy may be full. What's the benefit of all this?
Joy. And not just temporal joy, not
the joy, not like the peace of the world, but the peace that
Christ gives you. My peace, you'll abide in my
peace. You'll abide in my love. Now you'll abide in my joy. Is
it about us finding joy? Is it about us having love? Is
it about us exercising peace? No, it's about resting in Christ. So abiding in these things is
a promise that Christ gives. These things I have spoken to
you. I have cleansed you by the word I have spoken to you. Now
these things are yours by the word I have spoken to you that
my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. John says the same thing in his
first epistle. We have fellowship with the Son
and he has fellowship with the Father and indeed we have fellowship
with you. I know that the words are different.
You have fellowship with us and we have fellowship with the son
and he has fellowship with the father. We have fellowship. We are in one
another because the love of God abounds effectually for us. We are together as one redeemed
and purchased and sealed forever by the Holy Spirit. We are in
the love of God and we love you and you love us and God loves
us and we love him. And it's all seen in this way. Verse 12, that you love one another
as I've loved you. But what about those that don't? What is the burning away that
we looked at last week? I've been caught on the carpet
on this this week. Oh, that's about church discipline.
Is it? I don't see that in that text,
but for the sake of playing that game, let's see for a second.
So those who do not produce fruit are cut off and burned. those who produce fruit or don't
produce fruit the way they should, the Father prunes that they may
produce fruit. What is the fruit? We've just
learned it. Redundantly and overly expressively
and verbosely believing in Christ and His love for us. That's the fruit. If someone does not believe in
Christ and his love for them, how are they disciplined as children?
They're not. They're cut off and burned. I believe it is the image of
Israel as a shadow, though they were connected in that way as
divine because of their kinship to Abraham, because of their
mountainous obedience to Moses. But they were not in Christ,
they were condemned. Just like the Jews in the Exodus were condemned
because of their unbelief. Paul says in Hebrews 4 that their
unbelief, that their disobedience was their unbelief. Not their
doubt. Not their griping and complaining.
Not their making a calf out of gold and worshiping it. Not all of the sinful things
they did, but not believing that God's provision and love for
them was enough. not having faith that God could save them through
his means. Yes, judgment of discipline.
I mean, I guess we are cut off when we're excommunicated, but
I don't think that metaphor works here. I don't think that's what
Jesus is talking about at all. That is why I believe these verses
10 through 12 powerfully forced deals with the love of God that
keeps us. The love of God that keeps us is the love of God for
the Son manifesting the redemptive work toward the elect in Christ's
obedience toward the Father unto death on a cross. This love is
the power of life toward us. Thus, we remain in the faith,
or in the vine by faith, who is our only hope, our only life. Because we need to remember the
disciples are clean. So if you abide in my love, my
commandments, my love, my promises to you, you believe in what these
are, you believe in them. But what is your walking in love? It's loving one another. He repeats
it right there. This is my commandment, verse
12. So if we want to know at the minimum what the commandment
that Jesus continually deals with, as does the apostles, it
is about loving one another. as I have loved you. And then
the explanation of that, verse 13, look at it. Greater love
has no one than this. Because it's saying, OK, how
do we love each other? Jesus, how are we supposed to love you?
We hear you. Could you imagine? Because you
see this redundancy, what it does to us. We're sort of like,
OK, we get it, but OK, you know, is that the way you feel? I got
it. Why does he keep saying it? He illustrates it. Greater love
has no one than this. I mean, there's no greater way
to love someone. There's no greater way to love someone than what
I'm about to say. Someone lay down their life for
his friends. And Jesus was going to show and
not just show. Produce an effectual love. Through his death. You're my friends. He calls them
that in the next three verses. You're my friends. You're not
my enemies. You're my friends, and I'm going
to lay down my life for you, not for Judas. He's not my friend. See what happens? This is sort
of next week. See what happens? You'll say,
wow, We're friends of Jesus, but I wonder how we got to be
friends of Jesus. How do we keep that? Verse 16, I did not, you
did not choose me. I chose you. That's further expression, lay
down my life, greatest love, greatest commandment, greatest
abiding. We love in Christ, see, not our flesh. Beloved, yes,
we could die for one another, but laying down our lives for
one another in other ways is just as loving. Especially when people don't
deserve it. The fruit and the faith that
we have are all of Christ, that we trust in Him to secure our
calling, to secure our efforts, and to maintain our hope and
our place in Him by faith. We don't do it, He does it. I will love you, and your love
for me is your love for each other. That's what Jesus says.
Loving Jesus is not faith, but loving Jesus surely does
show us what walking in faith can do. And loving Jesus is not a constant,
just like loving one another is not a constant. But Jesus
never didn't love us, and He never didn't love the Father.
So it all goes back to what? Trusting in Jesus. Trusting in
His work. through which he died to save
us from our sins. Let's pray. We love you, Father, and we're
thankful for being able to have this opportunity to worship,
to hear, to know the truth, that we are
free from the work of our flesh, that we are free from everything that would hinder us from believing,
that would hinder us from standing before you perfect and holy.
We are free from it all because you, through Jesus Christ, have
satisfied all the requirements of righteousness for us. And
His righteousness has been credited to us. And we live this day by
faith in Him. Father, would you please help
us to love one another? Would you help us to walk in
a manner worthy of the calling that you've given us? Would you
put the word that is so powerful in our hearts and minds that
when we think of what we should say, we think of how we should
counsel, it would be loving counsel. We would lay aside our own wisdom
and our own feelings and speak the truth that you've given us
in Christ. And it's in his name we pray these things. Amen.