INTRO
Good Morning… Blah Blah… talk about something…
We are going to continue our series through John this morning… And i don’t know about you but this has been one of my favorite series that we have done… And if you missed a week you can always go to our website to watch the week you missed, listen to a sermon on our App, or stream our message from your favorite podcast app.
Next week is our last series… You DON’T want to miss it!
Today we are going to look at a passage in which Jesus teach how to be productive, how to bear fruit… Now I think we all want to be productive. We all have a desire to grow, to be successful, to make something of ourselves. What that exactly looks like will differ between all of us… But nobody wants to be failure. But my guess is most of us don’t have an idea how to do that. We don’t really know how to grow, how to accomplish what we want to accomplish…
To illustrate this Jesus is going to use the an illustration of growing… Of gardening.
TENSON
How many of you are gardeners? How many of you kill anything you try to plant?
If you aren’t a good gardener, you are in luck… story about mom and I gardening and how much I know...
I’m going to teach you how to grow an apple tree today.
In fact I’m going to have a full fledged tree here on stage in just a few minutes of work and for just a few dollars…… You ready? (act a little cocky)
Take out fence post, stick in dirt, and nail/duct tape an apple to it.
Have more fun with example... I’m going to show you... my mom was a good gardener... this going to be great…
when it’s done step back a little arrogant.. look at it... it’s pretty great... look at that trunk. Look at the fruit...
Everyone in this room knows this is not an apple tree. It’s a fraud. If you saw this in someone’s yard you would not think this is a healthy growing tree. It’s not even a tree, it’s not every going to produce any fruit because it’s not connected to a source that can feed it.
But this is what we do with our spiritual lives… Compare to our religiosity... this is what we do... in same voice. Read my Bible, made it to church… Look how good i am… Look at this tree I’m growing…
In this tree I see me… I live like this sometimes… I look at my life and think man I’m doing good… I don’t say that many bad words… I’ve read my bible… I go to church all the time… Look at the fruit I got…
Maybe you are like me… Maybe you got some fake fruit too. Maybe you put on a face and pretend to have it all together.
Maybe your tree isn’t exactly like mine… Maybe you've built your tree around money… And you think if you can just get more than you will have a beautiful fruit tree. Maybe your tree is all about success if you can just grow more do more than everybody else then you will be fruitful… Maybe your tree is your looks, how you portray your family, how you are perceived on social media…
You see so many of our lives are like this… We all want to be success we all want to produce something of lasting value, of eternal significance. But so many of us we’ve attached to the wrong source. We think if we just look more religious, have more money, put together the perfect family, get that promotion, attain that status then we will have something of value…
But we, just like this tree… Are attached to the wrong source.
There’s only one way to grow someone of lasting impact, of eternal significance…
And that’s what we are going to look at in todays passage… Jesus is teaching the disciples and he is telling them how they can produce fruit and then what that fruit will do…. And this is a teaching that we should lean in on… It’s one we need to here… So turn to John 15… And let’s see what Jesus says…
TEACHING
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 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. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 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.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.(SLIDE)
There’s a few terms here that we need to define… First is the word abide… Jesus uses that word a lot in this passage and it’s one you probably won't here outside the Bible. So let’s define what that means.
Abide = Give Attention to God Daily (SLIDE)
Abiding is simple… It’s easy to understand. It’s looking for God in daily activities. It’s recognizing the things he’s doing for you. It’s cutting out time to spend with him. It’s reading the bible to gain a deeper understanding of him. It’s giving him attention daily. It’s simple.
But not easy… Abiding is very simple to understand and very difficult to live out. But it is through abiding we grow…
There’s a few more terms we need to define…
Jesus is using some gardening terms here. His audience would have been very familiar… But for us today it lost because we rarely see where our food comes from… We just buy it at the grocery store.
The picture Jesus is painting here is one of creating a healthy vine, a healthy plant. A good gardener will examine their plant and do two things…
A Good Gardener: (SLIDE)
Cuts Off the Dead
Prunes the Fruitful
A good gardener will cut off the branches that are not producing fruit. If they do not it will actually damage the rest of the plant. Those branches literally become deadweight. They still suck resources from the rest of the plant, but they are contributing nothing. Therefore they have to go.
The second them is a good gardener will prune… When a branch has a healthy connection to the vine to the tree it will grow. But as it grows the nutrients will become spread too thin. So for it to have maximum effectiveness it needs to be pruned so that it can become even more fruitful…
God does not use pruning to hurt you… He uses it to grow you… But it will hurt.
The goal of both of these actions is the same… To produce more fruit. That’s the whole point.
But really Jesus isn’t talking about how to be a good gardener…. He’s talking about how he tends to us, his vines. His branches and he reveals his purpose for us… It’s to produce fruit. That’s what God wants for you. Not apples and grapes fruit… But God wants to grow in you things of value. He wants you to cultivate in you peace, patience, kindness. He wants to cultivate a thriving marriage. He wants to grow a desire in your heart for your neighbors, for your friends, for those people that live in an other country. He wants to grow your abilities, and stretch in what you think you can do. He wants to produce things in your life that when others see they will see him.
And I think we all want that don’t we? We all want something good, something meaningful, something valuable to come out of our life. And what Jesus is saying is if we want that then we might have to go through some difficulty.
The terms Jesus uses here are not pleasant. The invoke images of pain, discomfort, things we don’t want to happen. But if you don’t do those things to a plant it will never grow, never get bigger, and eventually will stop producing fruit. And the same is true for us. You see if the difficulties of life, it’s when we step out of our comfort zone, it’s when something or someone is taken from us, when we grow. It’s not in the comfort or easy times.
God is the gardener of our life… So that means that he will use those difficulties to grow us SO THAT we can produce more and grow more.
God cuts away the old. The bad. The sin. So that, New peace. New joy. New patience. New love. New Fruit can grow. Without pruning we will never experience the life that Jesus wants for us.
Jesus continues on with a promise of what will happen if we abide in him.
7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. (SLIDE)
Here’s what Jesus is getting at… If you stay attached to me… You WILL produce fruit.
Go back to this illustration… This tree… Doesn’t proceed anything because it’s not attached to anything…
This is important. Who is it that’s growing the fruit? Who is it that is producing? That’s caring for the vines?
It’s not us… It’s God. He’s the gardener. He’s the vine. We are the branch.
In other words if you want fruit in your life… If you want to grow your faith. Deepen your relationship with God. Then you have to connect to the source. You have to connect to the vine. You are just a branch. Apart from the vine you cannot grow.
Now that doesn't mean you can just sit back and not do anything… Sweet God is going to do all the work… I’m off the hook… It’s God that grows the fruit… But we still have the responsibility to abide. To stay connected..
And what Jesus is saying to us is if you want real fruit. like not the fake stuff… If you want your life to have eternal significance… Then there’s only one way to get it… Through me. Any fruit not produce through me is fake. It’s just a nail on a fence post. It won’t amount to anything of value. It will only leave you empty. There's no substance apart from me.
We can try to connect to other things.. . To money, power, our looks, our family status, our relationship status… We can try… This is all we will amount too.. We will never grow anything of value…
What Jesus is saying is if you want to be known as a patient person… If you want peace in our life… If you want your marriage to thrive… If you want your coworkers to be impacted, if you want to change your community… If you want to be remembered as a person that deeply cared about others… Then you have to connect to the source… That’s the only why you can grow fruit… By abiding…
By giving God attention daily we will bear fruit. It’s not automatic, but it is inevitable. (SLIDE)
Here’s an important concept that Gardeners know. Growth takes time. And you have to do the right things over time for that growth to happen. You can't just plant a seed and expect to eat an apple the next day.
You have to fertilize it, pull weeds, water it, prune it…. Everyday you have to care for it. And then a few months or a few years later you will have fruit.
That’s true in our lives too… Growth takes time. You aren’t going to read your Bible once and instantly all your doubts will disappear. You won’t pray once and instantly have your marriage restored. You won’t develop a heart of love overnight. You won’t have peace instantly. Those are fruits that God wants to develop in you… But they take time…
And what Jesus is promising us in this passage is that IF we abide he will produce fruit… And not just some fruit, but much fruit. This is what Jesus is getting at… This is the promise of this passage. If we abide we will produce fruit… We will produce something of value. We will be full of peace, joy, love… We will develop into the person that he wants us to be. We will overcome that sin. We will grow and have something valuable in our life.
Jesus continues on.. .But I want to highlight the next two verses.. because I think they reveal something important…
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. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (SLIDE)
I think some of us are hearing these words and are thinking… I don’t know if I want that. I don’t want to go through the pruning… I don’t want to be that disciplined and abide… It sounds like I’d have to redo a lot in my life to give God Attention Daily… I’m not sure I want that… And I think if you are honest what you are really saying is I don’t trust God. I don’t trust that that is the best way for life. So if God isn’t going to give me what I really want then I will go do my own thing to get it.
But what Jesus is telling us here is if you want true joy… Not joy that’s dependent on something or someone else… If you want joy that will not fade… Then you will only find that in me. I mean we know that’s true right? That’s why whenever we get that thing we are after that thing we think will fulfill us. It didn’t so we had to go after something else…
What Jesus is telling us is that he has our best interest in mind. That doesn’t mean life will be easy and fun… What it means is that we will always have joy. A joy that will last. He’s offering you what is best for you.
If you abide in Christ, if you Give God to Attention Daily… You will produce fruit and you will be full of joy.
APPLICATION
So where’s that leave us? Well just like Jesus message the application simple. But really hard to live out.
It’s an invitation to stop hanging onto this fake fruit and start cultivating something real. Something genuine. Maybe for the first time or maybe for the first time in awhile. ?
So let’s go back to what abide means.
Give Attention to God Daily (SLIDE)
For Christians… Keep doing this… Or start doing this again… Apart from Christ you can produce nothing, at least nothing of value. It’s easy but so difficult. So make it a priority… Make God a priority in your life. It’s the only way to grow. You have to find time to give God time daily…
Think about your other relationships… If you never spend time with your spouse. Never have meaningful conversations. Never hang out. Never have fun. What’s going to happen? Your relationship will fall apart, you will drift away. The exact same is true with God… If you never spend time with him you will never grow. You will never produce fruit…
Do you want to grow, to produce fruit? Then connect to the vine. You want your neighbors lives to be transformed? You want your marriage restored? Do you want to make an impact in this community? Do you want to live at peace regardless of your circumstances? Do you want to be the best parent you can be? The ONLY way the only way… Is if you stay connected to the vine…
A few years ago I had a friend in town and we’ve been friends for many years. He’s known me since I was a teenager. We went to college together… We have a lot of dirt on each other… For a couple years it was me and him as the upperclassman in our dorm.
During that time I had some negative characteristics in my life. In my early 20s or so I started to notice these things in my life I wanted to change. I would lose my temper with some of the underclassmen. I lack patience in just about everything. I had little humility. If I’m honest I didn’t really care about people. I start recognizing that these were wrong… But I had no idea how to change them. They seemed so deep rooted that I would never be able to change them. So I prayed. I asked God to transform me into who he wanted me to be. I remember specifically asking God to give me more compassion and more patience.
Fast forward 5-6 years And my wife and I were going out to dinner with him… My wife is a really good question asker… Something I could probably stand to do better. And she asked him a really good question.
While we were driving there she ask him how I’d changed since he’d known be. Which had been roughly 10 years.. He thought for a minute and said he’s a lot more patient and genuinely cares more about people now than he used to. He used to lose his patience with others a lot quicker and was a lot more self centered…
After I prayed that prayer in college You know what I did next? Nothing… Well okay not nothing. I kept praying that same prayer and I kept trying to give God attention daily. And I’ll be honest I didn’t really see growth until my friend pointed it out. And then we I thought back I noticed how over the years those things had be grown in me. Over a long time. I had become more patience. I did care about people, like genuine care, about people more. And I thought back to how I used to treat people and how I did then. And i saw God was growing in me. He was developing me. I would never had been able to do that alone.
Listen… That is what God is offering you this morning… He’s telling you if you abide in me I will grow something good in you. In time… But you have to stay connected to the source. If you don’t this (the tree) is all you will ever be able to produce.
CONCLUSION
We all want to produce something of value with our life. We all have a desire to grow, to be successful. We all something that has lasting, eternal significance… ?
But the problem is many of us are focused on the wrong things… So you have a choice… Do you want your life to be about this… Money, relationships, status, religiosity… Or do you want your life to have something of value? Do you want to be known as a person that’s not out for themselves… But actually cares about others. Do you want to be known as a person that loved deeply, their family. Do you want to be the person that is talked about for years after their death because the impact they made, the generosity they had… Do you want something of eternal value? Then connect to the source… Abide.
Maybe the story of Mary and Wallace Kamua…
What are you connected too? Is it Jesus or something else?
if we want to be a church where Jesus is > everything than it starts with each of us individually abiding.
In just a moment we are going to take communion. And this is a reminder of what Jesus did for us on the cross… And it’s also an opportunity to reflect on this question. Are you connected, are you abiding in Jesus? Jesus sacrifice allows us to continually come back to him, no matter what we have done or will do… So us this as a time to thank God for what he has done for you and to reflect on how you are abiding in him.
Pray…
