The Truth In The Vine Series

The Truth of the Vine

CCCAG November 18th, 2018

Scripture- John 15

Intro:

I'm going to start today by asking a question-

How many times have you walked into a completely chaotic situation and wondered- who's in charge around here?

In the fire service, we had this same situation happen to us on a massive scale when the September 11th attacks happened. NYC had fire departments and fire personnel coming in from all over the country.

Each one of these fire departments had their own unique command structures.

Each one of these departments had their own way of communicating that nobody else knew what they meant.

Most of these departments even had different terminology for the kind of vehicles they had parked at their fire station.

So in all these people came together to work at a scene that was being managed by the New York fire Department, it was chaos initially.

What we is emergency services learned from the September 11th attacks was codified into what is now called the National Incident Management system, otherwise known as NIMS. What NIMS does for us is establish is a common language a common command structure and very specifically delineated responsibilities for each command sector. If NIMS is used correctly a firefighter from California should be able to come here to Whitehall and jump right into our system and understand what we're talking about and vice versa.

I can kind of already hear what you're thinking - what does this have to do with John chapter 15 and the video we just watched that depicted this section of scripture?

Today we are going to be exploring how God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit work as one within the church.

It's been a few weeks since we've been in John's Gospel so let me refresh where we are. We are in a section of John's Gospel called the Upper Room discourse. These are a series of teachings that Jesus does immediately before going to the cross. This is the last time that Jesus is going to be able to teach his disciples as a group before he goes to his death.

Jesus is being very specific about what he wants His teachings are be before He leaves his disciples with and one of the most important things that Jesus can bring his disciples to understand is exactly how the Kingdom of God is going to operate given what he is about to do on the cross.

Jesus has to help them unlearn what they think they know.

Remember Old Testament theology has been ingrained in these men. Also remember their belief in Messiah is that of an earthly King that throws out Roman power not of a spiritual Kingdom that comes in and changes the hearts and minds of the people who enter this Kingdom.

So Jesus is using this time to start the processes that will change their thinking from the Old Testament where it's only about God the Father and bringing them into New Testament where they are also going to be talking about how God the Son and how the God The Holy Spirit are going to be involved in this new church.

So we're going to look at John chapter 15 today and see how Jesus is using it to speak prophetically in how this new organization called the church is going to function.

Let's ask God's blessing on our time.

Prayer

We're going to break this down today and you're going to see how Jesus is already looking forward past the cross, past his resurrection, and past his ascension and even past the outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming into the church to give His disciples some basic instruction of how the triune God is going to be intimately involved in this new thing called the church.

I. How the Triune God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit functions in the church

Jesus is laying a foundation here that Paul is going to build on about 20 years after these events. What Jesus gives in brief, Paul expands on later in the bible.

Basis- 1 Cor 12:4-6 (outline briefly)

First Corinthians 12 verse 4- There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

A. Jesus is the vine

Jesus said in verse 1 of John 15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.

The first thing that Jesus says in this teaching of how the church is going to operate is the different roles that the father and the son are going to play in the church.