This is the second message in our three-part series on our shared Mission Together as a church: Being Disciples of Jesus Christ who are Growing and Making Disciples of Christ.
· The first point was that “We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ”
· And the second point that we are going to unpack really flows from the first and that is that we are called to Grow in Christ
· Last week we saw in John 8 that true disciples abide in His word and through abiding in His word, we know the truth and Jesus sets us free
· And it is out of our identity in Jesus that any and all growth in Jesus will occur
· Now here in John 15, we can see that out of our abiding in Christ and finding our all in Christ, is also how we will bear fruit in our lives.
Main idea: God causes us to grow & gives us joy as we stay in Jesus Christ
· Bearing fruit is not optional for the believer. · Jesus is saying is that either we bear fruit or we aren’t really His disciples and there is only one final and ultimate destination for all those who are not His disciple and that is to burn (in hell).
· No matter how good one looks on the outside, no matter what good works are done, it won’t matter
· But here is the paradox – although we must grow and we must bear fruit, we can’t make growth happen on our own.
· The reality of growing in Jesus Christ is that the growth we must have and the fruit that we must bear, only comes from staying in Jesus Christ.
· We are called to the kind of discipleship where everything flows from Him and everything is for Him. We are called to live in such a way that everything is done for the master. Living and loving Him with all that we are for His glory.
· The mission we are on is too important for us to play around on.
· Jesus tells us we must bear fruit and then He says that we can only bear fruit if we abide in Him.
1. Growing comes through Staying in Jesus Christ
· Jesus says that He is the true vine. In the Old Testament, Israel was often called the vine – but in every case, Israel wasn’t faithful and Israel was the object of punishment· But Jesus has been truly faithful – where Israel failed and He alone is the true vine.
· Where Israel and all of mankind have failed though, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus did not fail and it is the fact that He did not fail which is the source of all our hope.
· Each spring, flowers appear on the little fruit trees that I have in my yard.
· Somehow and from somewhere, (I really don’t know how), first the flowers and then eventually little fruit springs out and is displayed off the branches.
· Somehow, the nourishment from the roots and the life of the tree pushes out through the branch and it bears fruit, even though we don’t really understand and see it happening.
· This is the picture that we have of bearing fruit in Him and abiding in Him – staying connected to Him
· When a branch breaks off a vine, there is no way that the branch will bear fruit, no matter how much that little branch might will itself to bear fruit. The flowers may remain for a few days but there will be no true and lasting fruit. It is the same way with us – we can’t bear fruit apart from Him.
· The lord put us in the vineyard and placed us - grafted us into the vine and He put us there, so that we could bring Him glory - so that we would bear fruit for Him and show off his handiwork.
· Of course, bearing fruit for Him doesn't graft us into the vine. That would be an absurd idea. Imagine a branch that was bearing fruit and then taking credit for being in the vine - the very idea is absurd. Growth and fruit come from the fact that the branch is part of the vine.
· Why is the branch part of the vine to begin with?
· Did the branch cut itself off of the dead bush it was a part of before on its own? No - that just isn't possible. The Master - the Lord of the vineyard cut the brand off and grafted it into the vine.
· So, as a branch, what is our responsibility?
· We must abide. We must remain.
· Well, what does that mean? Because by definition a branch that is part of the vine does remain in the vine, otherwise it isn't really in the vine at all - it is just a weed that is close to the vine and at times can be confused with the branches.
· But when it comes time for the harvest, it is evident that the branch can't really be in the vine, because no fruit is being born.
· If we are connected to Him; if we are in Him; if we feast on Him and partake of Him; if our very lifeblood comes from Him, then we too can be like Jesus and keep His commandments
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· Remaining fruit comes from remaining in Jesus Christ
· He is the only one we are to abide in – he is the only true source of life.
a. We must grow – we must bear fruit!
· Jesus said that we must grow – we must bear fruit
· But not only that – in Matthew 7, Jesus tells us that not only must we bear fruit, we will be recognized by our fruit
Matthew 7:19-21 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. 21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
· There is a frightening imperative that we have. We have to bear fruit and if we don’t we will be thrown into the fire.
· And the warning for us is that mere external obedience doesn’t cut it · So in both John and Matthew – Jesus is challenging us to examine our fruit and to see if our growth is real or if it is man-made and just mere external obedience
· It is only as we do the will of the father – only obedience from a heart to love God that brings lasting fruit.
b. We can’t make growth happen on our own
· There are many other counterfeit vines and counterfeit ways that claim to have life.
· You can try to bear fruit through legalistic observance of the law and through separating yourself from society and trying to keep a whole litany of rules and regulations, (do not eat, do not touch), but you just can’t do it.4 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.
· No branch can bear fruit on its own· None of our works produce any real fruit on our own
· If we desire to bear fruit, we must abide in Christ
· If we desire to be fruitful, we must abide in, hold onto and remain in Jesus
5 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.
· Those who live in Christ and whom Jesus lives in, do keep on bearing much fruit.
· This is not encouragement to self-sufficiency though, because it says “apart from me you can do nothing”. No fruit; no growth is produced by self sufficiency.· On our own, apart from Christ, no matter what means we try, Jesus says we can do nothing.
· This doesn’t mean that we can’t do a lot of works. In fact, we can do a whole lot of works and things that look good on the outside.
· So, what is the difference between philanthropists and people who do a lot of good, humanitarian work and a disciple of Jesus? It is all about abiding in Jesus and having our works flow from love for Him. Jesus blesses the works of those who abide in Him and he brings forth fruit. Apart from Jesus though, all works amount to nothing.
· Paul says it a little differently in 1 Corinthians – he says if you have not love you are nothing.
· You can give your body to be burned and you can speak with the tongues of men and angels. You can do all kinds of great deeds but unless you have love, you are like a clanging gong – just a bunch of noise.· We cannot bear any fruit whatsoever based on our own works and self-effort.
· This is astounding really
· This completely takes away from any legalistic approach to obeying His commandments and it turns us to completely rely on and depend on Jesus to do anything and everything
2. Growing comes through Pruning (2-3)
a. God’s pruning makes us more like Him
“and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (verse 2)· In horticulture, if you want to have maximum fruitfulness, you must prune the vine
· It is the same in the Christian life. At times, God must prune or clean us from being attached to sin, so that we can have maximum fruitfulness· As the master gardener, the Father takes action to cleanse His people so that we will live fruitful lives
· The purpose of all pruning is so that the branch might bear more fruit
· The Apostle Paul tells us what this fruit is. It is the fruit of the Spirit.
· This is the fruit that only comes from the Spirit:
Galatians 5:22-25 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
· Part of the pruning that goes on is as God reveals the passion of the flesh to us and we then crucify the flesh · We are called to crucify the things we want too much.
· We are called to find those things which are too important to us and more important to us than Jesus Christ
· Those are the things that are running and ruining our life and creating the works of the flesh
· God cuts things off of us at times so that new life can grow.
· And we must let go of the things he is wanting to cut off.
· Walking by the Spirit is following the Spirit and yearning for Jesus
· You see, the Spirit yearns or desires to glorify Jesus and the Spirit testifies and points to the beauty of Jesus – the Spirit is in love with Jesus completely
· And all of God’s pruning and enabling us to say no to the desires of our flesh is so that we can see and hear the Spirit and walk by the Spirit – glorifying Jesus, loving Jesus, looking at Jesus, pointing to Jesus.
And the good news is that verse 3 tells us that, “3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you”
b. Jesus has already made us clean
· The disciples of Jesus are already clean because he has made them clean. They have the right to stand before God as clean, even though sin remains.
· Jesus is encouraging His disciples that it isn’t because they are unclean in His sight that they need further pruning (cleaning).
· The remaining sin and the remaining desires of the flesh do need to be cleaned and pruned from their lives but there is hope to obey Him; hope to follow Him, precisely because we are already made clean.
· Our righteousness in Him is what enables us to come boldly before the throne of grace and find mercy and help in our time of need
3. Staying in Jesus looks like obeying Him
a. Staying in Jesus looks like keeping His commandments· What does it mean to abide in Him? It means staying close to him. It means feeding on Him. It means making sure that we are not doing anything that disconnects us from the vine.
· No fruit is of our doing - and yet, the bible is clear that we must bear fruit!
· So how do we abide? Abiding looks like loving him. Abiding looks like not just hearing his word but doing it.
· Staying in Him looks like obedience to His word because we want to stay close to Him.
· Loving Him and staying close to him isn't just a feeling or a thought though. Loving and staying close imply action on our part.
· It is a love in action, an active abiding that looks like obedience.
b. Staying in Jesus looks like loving like Him (v 9-10, 12)
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. · Jesus has powerfully, fully and perfectly loved us just as the Father has loved Him
· But, it is possible for us to live in such a way that we lose sight of the great love that Jesus Christ has for us and in doing so, we experience a break in the close fellowship that we have with Him
· Jesus is reminding us that in all of our obedience – in all of our desire for bearing fruit and abiding in him – to not lose sight of His love.
· In fact, He commands us to live in and abide in His love. Abiding in Him is to abide in His love as well.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
· The way that we abide in Jesus – the way we abide in Him – the way we hold fast to Jesus – the way we hang onto Jesus in our lives is by keeping His commandments.· So if we love Jesus, we will keep His commandments
· And this is a keeping of commandments that flows from our love – not the other way around
· If we keep His commandments, we will stay in His love. We are to love one another as Jesus has loved us
· Jesus goes on to tell us what keeping His commandments looks like. He says that keeping His commandments is done by loving one another as He has loved us.
· This is an even greater commandment than loving others as we love ourselves though. Loving God, keeping His commandments, is to love one another as He had loved us.
· He laid down His life for us and we are to do the same for each other in love.
· There is no greater love than the love that God the Father had in sending His Son and that the Son had in giving His life for us.
· If we want to know what love is, we need to always be remembering the gospel where we see the love of Jesus displayed the most
· And this kind of loving, this kind of obedience and fruit bearing, is all for the glory of the father.
8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
· As we abide in God the Son, our fruit bearing brings glory to God the Father.· Don't confuse the work of obedience with bearing fruit though - that only comes from God. (see Galatians).
· But obedience and abiding do look like keeping His commandments.
· How do you know you are abiding and how do you express your love for God? Jesus says that you express your abiding and you express your love through your obedience to His commandments.
· What are His commandments then? It is everything that Jesus taught.
· It is living for him instead of living for yourself.
· How do you keep yourself living for him. You follow what he said, you keep your mind on Him You keep your hands busy serving him so that you're not just serving yourself.
· You train yourself as a branch to do the things that a branch does to remain close to the vine.
· You reject those things that don't have to do with remaining in the vine. You put off the old works and the old fruit.
· What does abiding look like - it looks like saying no to the old works of the flesh and looking to keep in step With the spirit.
· Ask yourself - what do you need to put off?
· What are some of the works of obedience need to put on?
· Are we actively learning from Jesus every day?
· Are we following his model?
· Are we trying to be like our teacher?
· Pursuing abiding, obeying His commandments will look like giving and giving sacrificially at times.
· Pursuing abiding, obeying His commandments will look like loving and loving sacrificially.
· Pursuing abiding, obeying His commandments will look like loving God with your time.
· Are we loving God with our whole heart, mind and soul? Obediently conforming all of our thoughts, all of our desires, all of our longings and all of our actions to Him.
· Pursuing abiding, obeying His commandments, abiding in His love will look like taking up our Cross daily and following Him.
· We love Him and take up our Cross daily because of how greatly He has loved us!
· It is a continual abiding and trusting in the fact that because we are a part of the vine, that somehow, (even when we don't know how and we don’t feel it), when it is the right season, we will beat fruit.
· A fruit tree or a vine is always in the process of bearing fruit but you can’t always see it.
· In the winter, it is being fed and growing strong on the inside, even though the leaves have all been stripped off, it is developing a strength that will enable it to bear a heavy load when the fruit come in.
· A weak vine - a vine that hasn't been tested and strengthened wont bear fruit.
· God uses pressure and wind and a hot sun and rain all to make a branch strong.
· Sometimes storms come in our life but if storms didn't come, there would be no rain.
· If the clouds didn't seem to obscure the sun, they wouldn't pour out the rain we need and we wouldn't grow.
· If the Sun didn't shine, then there would be no photosynthesis and the sugars needed to make the fruit come out wouldn't be created inside the branch and leaves.
· But the sun can feel awfully hot at times! The sun hurts - circumstances bear down on us and we feel like they are going to burn us. Don't lose heart though - that hot sun is making us stronger. The storms that come will be used for our good too.
· Abiding in the branch means not going anywhere else because you know that whatever storms come, no matter how hot the sun feels, you trust that God is working everything to bring about fruit in your life.
· Abiding is trusting that the Master Gardener, (who grafted you in and put you in the vine at this particular place and around all of these other branches), really knows what he is doing.
· All of the fruit that we bear is a testimony to God’s work in us because apart from God’s work in us we wouldn’t bear any fruit.
· This is because any growth we have, any fruit we bear, is a direct result of the work of the vine dresser who grafted us in to the vine and pruned us and waters us. And it is as we are in His Son that He causes us to bear fruit.
· If you have seen any fruit in your life, it has come because God has been at work in us
· That is why we need to encourage each other about the fruit that we see. Testimonies of His grace remind us that God is at work in us and it also honors God and brings glory to His name, because only He can bring fruit.
4. Obeying Jesus is where we find Joy (11)
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
· We actually will enjoy God as we find our will conforming to His. As we love Jesus and keep his commandments, we will experience His joy in our lives.· Obedience is not meant to be drudgery. Growth in Christ is not meant to be dreaded.
· Growth in Christ through obedience that flows from loving and abiding in Christ will produce joy and in fact fill us with joy, even in the midst of pruning and troubles
· Just like Jesus delighted in keeping God’s commandments, you will find that as you grow in Him and abide in Him and find yourself keeping His commandments, you will experience Joy
· There is joy that comes in our walk, through knowing that we are actually living in a manner that is pleasing to him
· This isn’t taking confidence in the flesh –this is rejoicing that God is at work in you
· This is joy that comes from seeing God at work and enjoying his presence as we stay close to Him by following and obeying and loving Him
· Loving Jesus and loving the father through loving others bring us Joy, but the reason we bear fruit and grow still isn’t up to us
5. We Grow All Because Of God (God plants us, tends us and keeps us)
· When one sees a cultivated vineyard, it can only mean one thing - someone cultivated it. · If you were to see order and a field full of perfectly planted wheat - you would know there must be a farmer.
· The same is true for us. If there is growth in our life, God must be at work
a. We’re His Friends - Jesus gives us everything we need
· We are no longer called slave. He tells us that we are now His friends· Slavery doesn’t have privileges. The slave doesn’t know the plans of the Master but friends do. The master wouldn’t share His plans with those who are His slaves.
· We would only tell the secrets of our plans to our friends and Jesus calls us His friends now. Jesus tells us everything we need to know. Jesus tells us the plans of the master
· In fact, Jesus says that all He has heard from His Father, He has made known to them and so made known to us.
· This is a staggering statement – Jesus has not withheld anything that He Himself - the Son of God needed to know
· And in fact, He has shared everything that He needed to know, in order to love and obey God here on earth.
· So too, Jesus has given us everything we need to know here on earth to obey just like He did.
b. We will stay in Him because He chose us
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. · But so that we don’t get the wrong idea, Jesus explains that our obedience does not secure us in Him and in fact, His disciples didn’t even choose Him to begin with.
· When we come to Jesus as His disciples, we feel can like we took the initiative· Instead, Jesus makes it very clear that it was really He who choose us and appointed us that we should do and bear fruit.
· We’ve been chosen by God. We’ve been appointed to bear fruit. We’ve been chosen and appointed to bear fruit that abides - fruit that lasts and stays there
c. We will grow in Him because He keeps us
· Our fruit will remain because He chose us and has appointed it. That is good news! That is our blessed assurance!d. We will grow in Him because He will enable us (7, 16)
7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
· In the process of growing and abiding Jesus tells us “ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you”
· This is a difficult sentence to understand, because at first blush, it appears that we can ask whatever we want – carte blanche – and it will be done for us.
· But there are two qualifiers: if we abide in Him and His words abide in us.
· In the process of pursuing growth and bearing fruit as disciples, we are encouraged to pray and to pray in accordance with our abiding in Jesus and in agreement with His words that abide in us.
· If we are living in Jesus. If we are finding all of our life in Him and the words of Jesus abide in us, then we are living in a way that our prayers will be in agreement with God’s will and they will be answered.
· Jesus tells us in verse 16, that whatever we ask in His name, He will give it to us
· The Father is not trying to withhold good things from us. Our Father desires to give us whatever we need as we seek to abide in Him.
· Come to Him. Ask Him to enable you to grow and live for Him and please Him. Ask Him for big things. Ask Him to change your heart and enable you to obey Him, love Him and live for Him.
Potential Application Questions:
1. Where are we bearing fruit in our own lives? How can we tell? What does this fruit-bearing look like if it is not about external acts alone?
2. What are some ways that we can practically pursue staying in (abiding in) and holding onto Jesus Christ?
3. How can we realistically encourage each other to stay in Christ daily?
4. How does it affect you to know that God causes us to bear fruit?
5. How does Jesus’ statement “apart from me you can do nothing” help us combat self-righteousness and self-sufficiency?
6. Since God prunes us only to make us more fruitful, how does that change your view of seasons of pruning? (how does it affect your faith in seasons of pruning too?)
7. How does your own personal use of money, possessions, time and talents reflect your own love for God?
8. Where has God been convicting you lately to love Him by obeying Him?
9. Where have you experienced joy in obeying Jesus personally?
10. How does it help you to know that our engrafting, growth and fruit all depend on God? (God plants us, tends us and keeps us)?
11. How does knowing that Jesus said two times in these verses that we can ask whatever we wish in His name change the way we view God’s willingness to bless us and our view of prayer in the growth process?
