STUDY THEME: EIGHT DAYS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. 3-10-02
"BEING PRODUCTIVE." JOHN 15: 1-17
JOHN 15:1-4, 5-8, 9-11, 12-17.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOHN 15.
Today’s lesson seeks to answer the very important question, "What does Jesus expect of me?" Being a Christian does not simply mean that we are to be people who are sentimental and have a good warm fuzzy feeling! We are to be people who carry out the work of the Lord! We ought to want to share the good news of Jesus Christ so that all might know and live for Christ.
We need to understand that we cannot carry out the work of Christ in our own strength or by our own clever intelligence. We can only be effective servants for Him by remaining in a close, loving relationship with Christ. Far too many Christians lose this sense of the reality that Christ literally lives within them. Many Christians live each day as if Christ were a million miles away. This is a very tragic thing in the life of far too many Christians.
The suggested "Biblical Truth" is that because of their ongoing close relationship with Him, Jesus expects His followers to be productive for Him and enables them to be so. The suggested "Life impact" for this lesson is to help us to be productive for Christ.
Jesus gives us the definition of success in "The Parable of the Vine." God defines success as "fruitfulness." God is speaking of the fruit of your life. Branches without fruit get cut off. Fruitfulness is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time. Our productivity is determined by (l.) our relationship Christ, (2.) our relationship to other believers and (3.) our relationship to the world. Our fruit doesn’t have to be acceptable to us. It has to be acceptable to God. He is the final Fruit Inspector.
The setting for this chapter is somewhere along the way to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus and the eleven apostles had completed the Passover Feast, initiated the Lord’s Supper and are now going by the way of the Temple, across the Brook Kidron and ascending the Mount of Olives.
Perhaps Jesus stopped at a vineyard terraced along the hillside at one of the wealthy homes along the way, and compared His relationship to His followers to that of a vine and its branches, to assure them of a productive and gratifying life. What Jesus calls for is radical discipleship and absolute devotion to Him.
Jesus began with the last of the seven great "I am" affirmations in John’s Gospel. He uses this statement to illustrate another aspect of our relationship with Him. Notice also Jesus inclusion of the Father as the Vine-dresser and His disciples as the branches.
In the O.T. God had planted Israel in the Promised Land to be the evangels to all others. Over and over again in the O.T, Israel is pictured as the vine or vineyard of God. The Vine was part and parcel of Jewish imagery, and the very symbol of Israel. God intended Israel to bear fruit for Him to glorify His name before all the nations of the world. But He says sadly through the prophet Hosea, "Israel is an empty Vine, he bringeth forth fruit to himself." There was no real fruit for God.
In Isaiah 5:1-2 and again in Jeremiah 2:21 Israel is a luxuriant vine yet instead of producing the fruit of righteous attitudes and actions, the people produced hypocrisy, greed and all kinds of evil. Listen to the prophet’s words:
2. PLEASE READ ISAIAH 5: 1-2.
3.PLEASE READ JEREMIAH 2:21
In today’s lesson Jesus came with a new message about God’s grapevine. Not Jewish blood but faith in Him was the way to God’s salvation. No external qualifications can set a man right with God; only the friendship of Jesus Christ can do that. The Lord Jesus, foreseeing all this, says, "I am the true Vine." All else had failed, but He was to be the witness for God in the world. He was to bear fruit for Him. But He was going away. He was on His way already to the garden of sorrows, and then to the judgment-hall, the cross, and then back to glory.
If you want a full-blown spiritual life, start with depending on Jesus. Notice this is a two way street. There’s a lot of people that want Christ to abide in them but they don’t want to abide in Christ. Christ living in you is a crucified life. You’re dead to sin and dead to the world.
Vs. 3 points out that we are cleansed by the word! This purging is accomplished by the Word of God and is the only true washday miracle. 1 Peter 1:22 says, "Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth." We were born again by the Word, we were washed from our sins by the Word, then after we’re born again we get dirty, and we need the Word of God to cleanse us daily, because God uses the Word to reveal to us when we’re not walking according to His will.
In Vs. 4 Jesus is actually saying "Stay with Me and I will stay with you." Heb. 13:5 says, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." Jesus said in Matt. 28:20 "and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the ages." He says the whole point of being one of His followers is to bear fruit to the father’s glory. In fact, He says if you don’t bear fruit, there’s something wrong. In Vs. 1 He begins with the statement that He is the true Vine and His Father is the vine grower. Now for the disciples this would have rung loud bells. The image of a vine or a vineyard was a common image of the nation of Israel. Israel had failed to do what God required, and so would be left a desolate wasteland. But now Jesus has come and He declares that He is the True Vine. He is the one who will obey the Father and please Him in all He does, the way Israel failed to do. The Vine is the source of life for the branches.
But if Jesus is the Vine, those who have joined Him as His followers are grafted in and become branches of that same Vine. And that means that we are expected to bear fruit. If we don’t bear fruit, the Father, the vine grower, will prune us. He’ll take away those parts of us that are unfruitful, or that are bearing wild grapes, and those parts that are bearing fruit He’ll prune to make them even more fruitful. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain (abide) in the vine. To abide in Christ is to be in constant communion with Christ. God wants us to abide (remain in Him), so we can bring forth much fruit.
Many Christians think they can live like the Devil all week, and serve the Lord on Sunday. One pastor said, " at our church every member is an active member: some are active for the Lord and some are active for the devil. What Jesus is saying to us is that kind of living won’t work; when you wake up in the morning, are driving your car, at the grocery store, or at church, you are to be in constant communion with your Lord.
Have you ever observed how a grapevine grows? It first sends out shoots, some of which have flowers on them, which become grapes. But then about the time that the grapes are beginning to ripen, it’ll suddenly have a spurt of growth. New branches spring out of the vine, new growth. To the casual observer it looks wonderful, full of health and vigor. But the vine grower isn’t interested in lush growth, He’s interested in luscious grapes. So one of the jobs of the vine grower is to go along and prune those branches that don’t have any fruit on them. In fact, some grape growers in a good year, will even go along and cut off some of the bunches of grapes so those that are left are even better.
Grapevines would rather produce shoots and leaves than grapes. They look lush and green but ultimately they are only good for making decorations. (We all tend to seek looking good to others more than really changing.) We need God to cut off all the showy pretenses in our lives. Branches with no fruit must be removed so they don’t draw nutrients away from the grapes. (We all have attitudes and actions that will never make us look like Jesus—they must go.) Fruitful branches must be pruned back to produce even more grapes. (We will never stop growing. We will always need to cut out old ways of thinking and acting and replace them with Jesus’ thoughts and actions.
4. PLEASE READ JOHN 15: 5-8.
This message from Jesus gives us hope. God doesn’t want to leave us on our own. He wants to be the Gardner who cares for us and makes us fruitful. God can do in us and through us what we could never do by ourselves. Jesus speaks of absolute dependence. That’s what Jesus says next you see. "Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." It seems so simple, doesn’t it? If you want to bear fruit you need to draw life from the vine. That means you need to remain firmly connected to the life of the vine. That’s what I take Him to mean by "abide in me." So we need to be constantly looking to Christ for our daily food; to be constantly feeding on the Word of God, on the bread of life. Firmly connected to Him and to other Christians.
This will make us more and more fruitful—giving us more and more righteous attitudes and actions. Jesus Himself will live in us and God will answer our prayers as we learn to put the Bible into practice. These words also challenge us to live a new kind of life. We can no longer make excuses for our failures and shortcomings. Jesus can give us the strength to change and God can cut away all that is not fruitful.
I’d like to make a statement this morning—"If you are withering---look out because you’re probably beginning to die! But there is hope! It’s sad, but true, that for a lot of Christians---our relationship with Jesus grows old. What do I mean it gets old? I mean that it withers—the relationship with Christ that was once so vibrant and fresh and exciting becomes slow, stale and boring. The sad thing is that sometimes its hard to see this happening because these people still come to church, they still "do ministry", they still say all the right words, they still sing choruses. To lack freshness is another definition of something withering.
Why does this happen? The answer my friends, lies in us as human beings. It’s not God’s fault: it’s our fault. As human beings, it’s easy for anything to get old to us! If our relationship to Christ is to be fresh, vibrant and exciting we need to remain in Him. Otherwise as He says in Vs. 6, "If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned" Jesus understood our human nature—He knew that we get bored easily.—He also knew that when we’re bored we don’t do anything. In this passage that refers to producing fruit in our lives Jesus is really getting to the heart of what prevents us from producing fruit as Christians.
These words also challenge us to live a new kind of life. We can no longer make excuses for our failure and shortcomings. Jesus can give us the strength to change and God can cut away all that is not fruitful. God longs for permission to prune our lives. He knows that pruning can be painful, so He wants for us to ask for it.
It is at this point that some preachers and church members have TRIED to play the Gardner. Maybe we don't think that God is capable to do the work in peoples lives so we take the responsibility of the Gardener to expose faults in others!!! He is the Gardner…He prunes (cleans) away branches/saplings that stunt the growth of the branch. These branches give the appearance of growth but nothing is really happening inside of the branch. Jesus said to the Pharisees "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean."
The wood of the branches has the curious characteristic that it is good for nothing. It is too soft for any purpose. The only thing that could be done with the wood pruned was to make a bonfire of it and destroy it. Jesus says that His followers are like that. Some of them are lovely fruit bearing branches of Himself; others are useless because they bear no fruit. Jesus was thinking of Christians who were useless branches, all leaves and no fruit.
There are two things laid down about the good disciple. First, he enriches his own life; his contact makes him a fruitful branch. Second, he brings glory to God; the sight of his life turns men’s thoughts to the God who made him like that. God is glorified when we bear much fruit and show ourselves to be disciples of Jesus. The greatest glory of the Christian life is that by our life and conduct we can bring glory to God.
5. PLEASE READ JOHN 15: 9-11.
The nature of this union is that of the love-mastered life that demonstrates our loyalty to our Lord and allows Him to express Himself through us in fruit. I think the key to our relationship to Christ is John 15:4 when Christ says: Abide in Me. The first aspect of abiding is that you can’t rush it. Jesus took time to go off and pray in a heavy schedule. We read in Mark 1:35, after healing many in a particular town, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.
The second aspect to "abiding" is getting to know Christ. If you hang around someone long enough you get to know that person well. As we spend time in prayer, meditating on God’s word, listening to what He would say to us, we will get to know Him—what He likes and dislikes. Christ would have us make prayer and Bible study central to our lives. Branches only produce fruit when connected to the Vine. Are you connected?
The third aspect of "abiding in Christ" is allowing Him to change us for the better. When you are around Jesus He changes you. It is our changed lives that are going to impress people. There are some people who think that Mission is all about knocking on people’s doors, giving them a tract and inviting them to church. But it is more than that. It is the way we live that counts. St. Francis of Assisi once said "Preach the Gospel to all the world—and if necessary use words." I shared with you how the man in St. Louis, Ok. said, "I became a Christian not by being preached at but by seeing Christ in the life of a Christian man and saying—"He has what I want."
Closely related to love is joy. Thus within a few verses we have the first three of Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit which he names in Gal.5:22: love, joy, peace. Jesus spoke of my joy. What was His joy? Two verses illustrate His joy. After Jesus led the woman of Samaria to take the water of life, Jesus was asked to eat something. He replied "I have meat to eat that ye know not of…My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus "for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Unsaved people often think of Jesus as a killjoy. Actually He is a joy-giver. His joy is dependent only upon doing the will of the Father. Such joy is inward and lasting, but it also leads to true happiness.
Martin Luther, the great 16th-century reformer of the church, was in a mood of melancholy. His wife appeared at breakfast dressed in black as if she were in mourning. He asked, "Who is dead?" She replied "Do you not know? God is dead." Luther reproved her for her blasphemy: "How can God be dead? He is eternal." Her answer must have stung: "Yes, but from the way you are cast down, one would think that God must be dead." Abiding in Christ involves abiding in His love and experiencing His joy. His objective is that His joy might remain in us, and that our joy might be full. Such love and joy are part of the fruit that comes from abiding in Him.
Ephesians 5:9-10 reads, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such there is no law." There are only two kinds of fruit that our lives can produce. On the one hand, all by ourselves, we can produce every kind of sin. On the other hand, with God’s help, we can produce the righteous attitudes and actions that Jesus displayed. Each of us will decide what kind of fruit we will produce by the seeds we plant in our lives. It would be crazy to think we can plant sinful attitudes and actions and produce anything but destruction of our lives. ."
Having dwelt at some length on the disciples’ relationship to Christ, He now turns to our relationship to other Christians.
6. PLEASE READ JOHN 15: 12-17.
The world out there is looking for something different from the Monday to Friday rat race. At the weekend, they want to get away from all that. If they see us as nothing more than an extension of the bickering that is going on in the office, they will not be attracted to our message or our Savior. If they see us as loving caring people who they like to have around, we will win them to Christ.
The expression "love triangle" usually refers to something immoral or bad. But back in vs. 9 Jesus mentioned a good love triangle. He said that the Father loved Him. He (Jesus) loved the disciples: and the disciples were to remain in His love. Love characterized the Father’s relationship to Jesus and Jesus’ relationship to His disciples. Consequently to remain in Jesus means to remain in His love. The disciples were to remain in Jesus’ love by committing themselves to obey His commands to love one another. Love would motivate obedience to Him, and obedience would cause mutual love among them selves. Such love would change the world. Jesus said when we get our relationship with Him right, it would affect our relationship to other Christians. Jesus left us two simple commands. Love God and love one another. Loving one another is just part of the process of bearing fruit, and loving one another is part of the reality of remaining in Jesus love. That is how we are going to reach people for Christ. By being a living testimony to Christ’s love
How far should such love go? Jesus declared that no person has greater love than a love that will cause someone to lay down his life for his friends. The supreme test of human love would be to lay down one’s life for another. Christ did just that and more. He laid down His life for us while we were still sinners.
Not only is Jesus the believer’s friend, but the believer is Jesus’ friend. He said, You are my friends if you do what I command (that is, love one another). Furthermore, for those who love He would no longer call servants because a master does not explain his business to a servant. When a master tells his servant to do something, the servant receives no explanation why. But with a friend the case is different. A friend is a confidant who is in close, loving fellowship with another friend. Such were the disciples with Jesus. And such are we who remain in Christ loving Him and one another.
Jesus disciples were with Him because He chose them, not the other way around. Normally a disciple chose the teacher from whom to learn. But Christ appointed His disciples and gave them the task to go and bear fruit, the kind of fruit that will last. And His call and appointment carried the promise of answered prayer—The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This promise is tied to the petitioners bearing fruit that lasts and asking in Jesus’ name—with His attitude of desiring God’s glory above all.
Then in a summary statement, Jesus commanded the disciples to love each other. He charged them to obey every thing He had said, especially the command to love one another. Love would motivate obedience to Him, and obedience would cause mutual love among them selves. Such love would change the world.
The final relationship Christ speaks of in John 15 is our relationship to the world i.e. those outside the church. This relationship we will not get to cover today but you may wish to read of it in John 15:19-16:4. Jesus calls us in John 15:27 to witness of Him.
NEXT SUNDAY FROM THE GOSPEL OF JOHN WE SEE HOW THE HOLY SPIRIT CONTINUES THE WORK OF CHRIST IN BELIEVERS AND IN THE WORLD.
A.V. DAUGHERTY 3-10-02.
Donald Grey Barnhouse cites an amazing example of lasting fruitfulness. In Hampton Court near London, there is a grapevine under glass; it is about l,000 years old and has but one root which is at least two feet thick. Some of the branches are 200 ft. long. Because of skillful cutting and pruning, the vine produces several tons of grapes each year. Even though some of the smaller branches are 200 ft. from the main stem, they bear fruit because they are joined to the vine and allow the life of the vine to flow through them. Christ is our Vine and we are the branches and often we need pruning; the goal is more fruit with which to glorify God.
CONCLUSIONS: