Source of Encouragement
John 15:1-17
Look at this limb…withered leaves compared to the rest of the branch that I cut off of the bush. Broken right there by the trunk. If this were still on the bush it would not be long before it just dried up and fell on off on its own or Bobby and tony might trim it.
I guess that something like this happens with every storm. Thousands of trees and bushes lose the ends of branches and limbs and some times a whole treetop can twist off. Eventually, the broken pieces will dry up and begin to decay. That happens because the broken section has lost its access to the life giving nutrients provided by the base of the plant. This broken limb will never produce flowers which matures into seeds, the fruit of the plant.
Our spiritual lives can be like that sometimes. From time to time we get separated from God and dry up spiritually perhaps are severed by some kind of personal storm.
And like this branch we fail to live up to the full natural potential as Christians.
The natural potential comes from our relationship with Jesus Christ that leads to some kind of fruit being produced.
Let’s read our scripture this morning: John 15:1-17
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 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. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
In the past few weeks I have been encouraging you to look with me at scripture to find out how God views our role. We identified that God is not as mad at us as we think as we looked at the prodigal son story. We found our that as members of the family of God we are to fill the role of priest to those in need primarily those that don’t feel able to look to God on their own.
So we represent a path that leads to God. Last week we identified that we also act as ambassadors for the kingdom of God. That we are on a mission to reach heaven and to bring as many people as possible through the direction of the spirit to keep us focused on the mission.
-- Today our scripture helps us to understand how we keep that life energy alive and according to Jesus we need to stay connected.
But there seems to be a problem. We have no guarantees of how many days we will have to live as the Priest or ambassadors of God in this world.
More specifically, there is also no guarantee of the effectiveness of our spiritual lives either. There are far too many storms and distractions to be sure that we will come to full maturity and bear fruit for the kingdom of God. That sounds a bit negative, doesn’t it?
It should not be because, God wants us to enjoy love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control in our lives. God also wants that fruit to come from our lives. God also wants us to have an impact on the world around us. He wants to see action and passion not sitting and waiting for this physical life to be over.
He wants to answer our prayers. He wants us to be able to heal. He wants us to be able to fix things in the world on some level, to be salt and light in this world.
That’s what God desires and that’s so often what we desire too and yet it doesn’t always happen.
Why, because it doesn’t come automatically flooding in to our lives. It’s not like we make a decision to follow Jesus and then effortlessly and automatically everything in our lives gets easy.
It would be nice if it were that way, but it doesn’t happen that way.
Spiritual life, like all of life, is a process and growth takes time. For our spiritual life to grow and mature it requires a connection to the source of life.
In today’s scripture, Jesus is teaching about some of the rules …. not really rules, but, just some of the realities of the spiritual life.
He told his followers that He was the vine and that we are the branches. That seems like a pretty clear image. Nice and simple even for plant challenged people like me.
Jesus uses a simple description to identify a simple truth – a member of the kingdom of God, a member of the family of God….A Christian is only effective and useful if he or she remains connected to the source of eternal life.
There is more in today’s scripture than I will be talking about today. It could easily take several weeks to cover all the details of this message. I am only going to hit the highlights. I would like to encourage you to read and study this passage on your own. There is a lot that you can get out of it is you take time to read it several times and let the spirit help you to really hear it.
Jesus begins by saying "I am the true vine." When he says something like this all of the people who are listening to him have a picture in their mind that they understand because all through the Old Testament Israel was considered the vine of the Lord or the vineyard of the Lord. And so they always envisioned themselves as God’s people, as being the vine and now Jesus says “I am the true vine” and when He says that He is pushing aside their view that by being born in to Israel or by being part of the Jewish institution, a religion, that they were part of God’s vineyard or God’s vine.
Instead he starts to focus on the fact that what connects them to what God is doing is a relationship, a relationship with Him. And so as we go into this time of thinking about what it means for us to be connected spiritually and to be growing and to be empowered, we have to remember right up front that we are not talking about our relationship to an institution, a Christian institution like the Methodist Church. No one is saved by their relationship with the Methodist or Baptist or any other denomination….
Jesus description to his hearers and readers is that the right relationship is with Him. That there needs to be a real spiritual relationship with the vine, with him.
Jesus is the vine and we are the branches.
Jesus goes on to say, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
"Remain in me." That is a command or at least an instruction to believers. The instruction is to stay connected, to stay in relationship. If we remain connected we will bear fruit. The instruction encourages that the believers work on the relationship, but there is no command or instruction to bear fruit.
Staying connected does not seem so hard and if we stay connected we will bear fruit just like on this plant, the part that is still healthily connected, or at least was so until I cut if off, this is still bright green, but the part that’s been disconnected dies.
So, the instruction from Jesus is for us to stay connected. A branch whether it’s a rose bush, a grapevine, a maple tree or an oak tree, it doesn’t matter; a branch does its thing naturally when it stays connected.
But, when it’s disconnected, nothing can make it work right again.
With plants being cut off from the trunk quickly becomes apparent. Depending on the weather it might only be a few hours before the leaves start to dry and wither.
-- It is usually a slower process but the same thing happens to people when they become disconnected from Christ.
Jesus is explaining that to be a part of a healthy community we must be connected to Him. If we do then we can mature and bear fruit, not because we have to but because it will be a natural part of your two way relationship with Christ.
When a limb is separate it can’t do a thing about it and it eventually dies.
But, if we become disconnected the same thing happens as we eventually die spiritually as well.
There is a huge difference between humans and plants. Humans have a special intelligence that allows us to make choices. We can brake away if we desire and we can also reattach spiritually at some time down the road.
But all too often we “high” thinking humans tend to act more like the limb. We don’t seem to notice that our connection to Christ is broken. Often Spiritually we have lost a real connection to Jesus and are withering away.
To be specific, there are a lot of people that are like this branch and broken limb on our altar table this morning.
---- LIMB
This dead limb is still physically connected but I believe that we can all see that it is dead.
And there are some of us that are physically still connected to the church, we’re still on the church roles, we still come to events at the church, but inside, in our lives and in the fruit of our lives… We are disconnected - we can see that we are drying up and dying.
We have a connection to the institution, we still have some or all of the habits the came from our connection in the past.
However, there is no Joy. Jesus explains why he is this truth, “ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
Jesus wants HIS joy to be in us to make us complete. He wants us to demonstrate joy and excitement and love to people in this world.
- I have this question for you; do you know the joy of the Lord that comes from a healthy connection to Jesus?
- Are you carrying around hate and resentment for people in your life?
- Are you dissatisfied with most elements of your life?
If you are connected to the church, or work or people around you and not connected directly to Jesus then you are a severed branch and wither you know it or not you are withering and dying spiritually.
So a question that we need to ask ourselves as we listen to something like this, is how are we doing spiritually?
The key to spiritual life, the key to being empowered, the absolutely essential thing we can not ignore is staying connected, remaining in a healthy relationship to Jesus Christ.
How do we stay connected?
Worship on Sunday is important but we also have Sunday school EVERY Sunday morning, Bible study on Sunday night. We have a prayer time on Wednesday.
Generally speaking, these events don’t seem to be helping very many people. I have a great hope that we all spend time reading scripture and praying while away from church.
That your self – study during this personal time we would receive nourishment from Jesus via the Holy Spirit. That kind of Spiritual connection is as effective as and maybe more effective than any group functions.
So the vision that we are focused on this morning is an understanding of how we get our joy and energy and excitement to fill our roles as Priest and ambassadors….It comes from our personal connection to Jesus Christ.
So how can we be sure that the connection is real and that it is healthy?
To confirm your connection all you need to do is to look around for the fruit.
The fruit is the spiritual growth in you as a person and in your church home. It normally included some level of physical increase in people in church….not necessarily members but at least visitors and regular attainders that appear as Jesus invites them into a relationship though His connection to each of us.
-- It is not that we as individuals or as a church can make something happen. The reading this morning says, “apart from me you can do nothing.”
It seems like that statement is not really true. We all do all kinds of things without consciously depending on Christ, in fact most of what we do we probably never give any thought to what Jesus might desire.
Look at how we spend our time and our money…
How about our giving to the church, do we consult God?
Do we make decisions like the people in this world that have no connection to Jesus?
Churches can do things apart from Jesus as well. We can have all kinds of religious programs, we can be busy day and night, and all without looking carefully towards God.
"Apart from me you can do nothing." What is Jesus then saying to us? Obviously we can have activity, we can do things in life apart from Him, but what does He mean here?
It means that sure we can fill our calendars, we can fill our schedules with all kinds of activities, some of them religious without consciously pursuing this relationship with Him, but it will never amount to much, whether we are doing it as a church or whether we are doing it as an individual.
We can have calendars filled with church activities that don’t change lives. We can have a life that’s filled with activity all over the community and yet it not bring love and joy and peace to our lives or the lives of others.
Apart from Him the really important things won’t happen. Apart of that is that the eternal things won’t happen. When it comes to eternal things, apart from Jesus Christ we can do nothing.
To not pray is to lose touch with the one whom we will spend the rest of eternity with and it’s to lose touch with the one right that’s preparing us for that. So that’s one thing. But we also lose touch with things that matter right now.
Things that matter for eternity matter right now too, because right today is part of eternity. Without prayer we can certainly stay busy, but we won’t experience love, joy, peace and satisfaction.
So it is not about just doing things. It is about connecting to what Jesus is doing or is willing to do through you and me.
There are people who are very concerned with the visible action of the Holy Spirit, but they are not concerned about their obedience to God and so if that is true their lives and their ministries are in danger.
There are people who know the scriptures backwards and forwards, but view it as an academic exercise, or worse than that, they view it as a law book that they can use to judge other people.
And if that’s the place of the word of God in your life and nothing more, then they are in a dangerous position as well.
There are people who attend worship and say all kinds of prayers, but if they are not having that heart conversation where they grapple with God about how their life falls short, then prayer comes to nothing too.
A group of people that enjoy a connection to Jesus Christ (A Church – A denomination) will exibit a few external traits that give away the reality of their relationship.
They know that God in the business of changing lives and have experienced it personally and more importantly the witness it happening to other people.
They depend on God for their effectiveness and success.
Prayer is always the first action when opportunities and problems arise.
They realize that their main mission is to move people toward Christ and helping them to become followers with their own unique relationship.
They believe that lives are changed by the work of the Holy Spirit and the word of God.
Each member is active in their own ministry of encouragement and growth and seek after God’s hart and vision for themselves and their church.
Folks the mission of Silver Creek UMC is not simply to find people to make a decision to accept Christ…The mission is to help people to become followers of Jesus. Not just decisions but disciples. Not dead limbs but branches that with God’s help will produce fruit for the kingdom and fill our mission of bringing people into eternity.
There is no better tome than right now to renew your connection. There is no better time to break your lifeless connections and to ask Jesus to repair that has been damaged. All Glory be to God!
