How many of you were here a few weeks ago when I shared my secrets to doing laundry? I shared how you have to make sure you sort the clothes. You have to check the pockets. You might have to treat some of the stains and you have to use the right water. You might have been impressed that I knew so much about doing laundry. If you were here last week, you would see that not only do I know how to do laundry; I know how to do accounting. As I shared last week, I know the difference between debit and credit. I know some basic bookkeeping skills. Today, I am here to share with you some of my secrets of planting, growing, and maintaining a very productive vineyard. Some of you know that going on eight years in June Debbie and I have been married. When we first met I had some reservations because she is 100% Italian. I am about 100% German. That was a tough transition because Italians bring a lot to the table. As a German, the only thing I bring to the table is a good recipe for sauerkraut and bratwurst and maybe a good Polka tune. I just really don’t bring a lot to the table. I thought maybe I can impress her by learning a little bit about her culture, specifically learning how to maybe grow a vineyard. Over the years, I have gotten pretty good at it. There is a picture here that shows what my vineyard in my backyard would look like. There I am. Look at the size of that clusters of grapes. Aren’t you impressed? I have learned a lot about growing a vineyard in the last few years. I would like to share a little bit of those secrets. They are not that tough. They are not really secrets. The first thing you have to know when you plant a vineyard, you have to make sure you are planting in an area that has plenty of sunlight. Especially if you are going to be planting a grape of the European variety such as the Cabernet Sauvignon or the Pinot Noir or the Cabernet and those types of things. You have to make sure that it has plenty of sunlight. The soil isn’t even as important as the sun. You also have to make sure if you are planting a vineyard especially early on that the vineyard gets plenty of water and that you have a good irrigation system. You may have to water it every day when it first begins until those roots begin to sprout up. You have to water it on a consistent basis. But you don’t want too much water because if you have too much water you will flood it and the grapes don’t like the excess water. Not only do you need sunlight and water, but you have to make sure that occasionally, at least once a year, you go and prune the grapes. Specifically go and prune off the bad branches because there is a lot of dead wood there that is sapping the energy away from the producing parts of the branch. Not only do you need to prune it, you need to periodically get in there and clean the branches. Clean around the vine. What happens is the branches end up going into the ground and get dirty and basically become a place that would attract insects, bugs, and possibly even disease. Those are the basics of planting and maintaining a successful grape vineyard. Like I said, it is not too hard to learn about that. In fact, I found out everything I just said on Google. Just typing in “How do you make a successful vineyard?” The good thing is you don’t have to go to Google to find out how to plant a successful vineyard. All you have to do is open up the gospel of John to chapter 15:1 and you are going to see how Jesus teaches us how to plant and maintain a very productive vineyard. So turn your Bibles to John 15:1.
As a refresher, we have been looking at the book of John. In the table setting, the supper setting, we saw starting in 13 that Jesus was giving some last-minute instructions to the disciples. And how in 13 he got up and washed the disciples’ feet. We saw the betrayal of Judas in there. We saw how Jesus handed bread over to Judas and Judas took the bread and immediately he was filled with Satan and it became night. We saw how Jesus predicted the denial of his closest disciple Peter. At some point, Peter was going to deny Jesus not once, not twice, but three times before the rooster crowed. We saw how Jesus let his disciples know that he was going to go away. He was going to go away to his Father’s house and he was going to prepare a place for the disciples and he was going to come back to get them. Last week, we saw how Jesus said I am going away but I am not going to leave you as an orphan. In fact, I am going to leave you my spirit. I am going to leave the comforter that is going to be with you this whole time to walk alongside you. Today, we see the parable of the vineyard. We see in this story how Jesus is letting the disciples know that if you stay connected to me, you are going to be a good branch. You are going to be a branch that not just produces fruit but produces good and plenty fruit. We are going to read starting at 15:1 and read down to verse 17. (Scripture read here.)
As you can see, we have a nice imagery of a vineyard. A very successful vineyard. This is very appropriate because Israel is a land of vineyards. In fact, I have never been there, but apparently when you drive through the countryside, you begin to see all these vineyards scattered throughout the countryside. Of course, the fruit of the vine is grapes. Grapes not only produce juice, but they are used to make wine. As we saw way back in chapter 2 at the wedding feast where Jesus turned water into wine, wine is a very important staple of the diet of the people of Israel during that time because they did not have access to clean water. It was a low alcohol content but basically almost every meal they were drinking wine. It makes sense that, with all the vineyards and this wine-producing region you would see in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, you would see this imagery of a vineyard. Actually this vineyard imagery goes all the way back to the book of Isaiah. Specifically I think it is back in Isaiah 5 where God is seen as the owner of a vineyard. He is seen as someone who planted a vineyard, specifically the nation of Israel. He planted that vineyard and put everything in place for them to be productive, but they didn’t produce fruit. Or the fruit that they did produce was bad fruit. Isaiah 5:1-2 “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” The picture we see is God planting this vineyard called Israel. He is clearing away the stones. He is clearing away everything that would hinder the production. In this case, he could be talking about clearing away the enemies. Clearing away those Canaanites, the Ammonites, and all those other –ites out there. Clearing them out of the way and then he plants his law. He plants a watchtower there which is basically his law. He puts keepers of the vine in place, really the choice vines, which are the Pharisees, the Jews who were supposed to establish the vineyard. He gave them this particular vineyard and said all you have to do is go out and produce good fruit. But they didn’t produce good fruit. They produced bad, rotten fruit. The reason they did this is because they failed to follow the commands. They broke the commands of God. They broke the number-one command that was not to follow false idols. The first thing they did was decide to go back and follow the pagan gods. Because they began to follow them, they began to get corrupted. They began to fall into sexual immorality. One after another they began to break the laws of God. The very laws that were designed to bear good fruit. So that is what is going on here.
In today’s passage, what we see is Jesus. Jesus is coming in now. He is saying I am going to take away that old vineyard and God is going to plant a new vineyard. In this vineyard, instead of the Pharisees and keepers of the law being the vines, Jesus says I am the vine. Then he goes on to say you disciples are the branches. You are the branches that are going to spread forth from the vine for the purpose of bearing fruit. Not just any fruit but good fruit. Fruit that will last forever. Fruit that will basically come out and yield a crop that brings glory to God. That is the setting. That is what is going on here in this parable the vineyard. But of course the disciples are probably a little bit clueless about what he is talking about here. Jesus has to give them some more instruction. What he has to do is begin to share his secrets of a successful vineyard. He does it. The first thing that he begins to explore is what I would call the secret of productivity. As many of you know, or all of you should know, when you make a vineyard, the object is to produce grapes. Not just a few grapes but a ton of grapes. I was reading on the internet that it takes one ton of grapes simply to produce 60 bottles of wine. It takes a lot of grapes. The grape vine has to be productive. We are not talking about grapes here and really Jesus is not talking about grapes. He is talking about fruit for the kingdom of God. When we think about fruit for the kingdom of God, we think about what would be the fruit of the kingdom of God. We think about converting souls. Winning people to Christ. Winning people into the kingdom. Drawing people back away from the world and into worship with their creator. That would be the fruit of the vine. We also see that when the people come in, they should be discipled. They should be helped along the pathway. Out of that would come fruit. We know in Galatians 23 it says “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self-control.” Those are the fruit of the spirit by constantly discipling and learning. We also see fruit that could come forth in the form of service. Some basic ministries that care for the emotional and the physical needs of people. That is the kind of fruit we are talking about here. Jesus is saying the secret to productivity, the secret of bearing good fruit is to remain in me. The secret is to remain in the vine. You should have picked up on that. Anybody have a translation that has abide? The King James uses abide. Abide and remain are basically the same thing. Jesus says “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 absolutely nothing.” Nothing. It starts with abiding. It starts with being with Jesus. You say what does that mean?
Let me back up for a second. What is interesting is you see that Jesus early on in the gospel is going to get his disciples. What does he say? He doesn’t say abide in me. He says follow me. All through the gospel it is follow me, follow me, follow me. Now he says just stop and abide in me. Just stop and spend some time with me. Just stop and be close to me. Just stop and connect with me. The bottom line is we are trying to be close to Jesus and the only way that we can be close to Jesus since Jesus went away is to be close to the spirit. We stay close to Jesus by the Holy Spirit. If you were here last week, I did Holy Spirit 101. The first thing I said is that the spirit came down at Pentecost in a mighty way and filled that first century church so much so that 3,000 believers were converted. Filled the people with the spirit. I said that same spirit that filled the people at Pentecost is alive and ready to fill you today. As you accept Christ as Lord, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit into your life. I said that that means that your very body is considered a temple of the Holy Ghost. It means you don’t go around messing up your body doing things you are not supposed to be doing. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.
You say that is cool Chuck. I have the spirit in me and the spirit becomes my guide but you told me to be close to Jesus by being close to the spirit but how do I get close to the spirit? It is really quite simple. In the world we develop habits. In fact, there is a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It is really talking about life and business, which are all good examples, but in the spiritual realm, the habits we want to develop are called the spiritual disciplines. They are disciplines because it takes practice to do it. It takes a long time to do it and you are not just doing it to be doing it. You are doing it so you can get into the presence of God. The spiritual disciplines include times like getting into prayer in your quiet time. It includes getting into worship in your quiet time or on Sunday morning. It includes opening up your Bible or possibly even fasting for a few days when you really want to listen and hear from the spirit of God. That is what I mean by getting close to the spirit. Those are the things that God gave us. The spiritual disciplines so we can enter into the presence of God. When we do those things, when we begin to get attached to Jesus through the power of the spirit, what happens is he not only says I am going to let you bear fruit, I am going to let you bear a whole bunch of fruit. You are going to be a very productive vineyard. You are going to be more productive than anything the world sees. In fact, the world’s approach to producing a vineyard is quite different. The world’s approach to producing anything in life is cram as much stuff as you can into the day. Pencil in every hour. Don’t waste a minute. Start at 5 o’clock in the morning. Go until 9 o’clock at night. Make your list. Strategize. Prioritize. Make your list and get things done. That is what the world tells us to do. Jesus says those are all good things. There is nothing bad with those things but my approach is a little bit different. In the Christian vineyard, you don’t start out by doing. You start out by resting. You start out in a place of abiding not doing. That is what I mean. It is like Jesus is saying before you do your to-do list how about you just kick your shoes off and sit down with me. How about you just kick your shoes off and spend five or ten minutes or a day or a week with me. How about you do that and then when you go out you are going to bear good fruit, productive fruit, much fruit, fruit that will last. As Christians, we do a lot of good stuff. Really I don’t think Christians get enough credit in the world for how many good things that we do. When you think about the major disasters that happen in the United States and across the world, the Christians are the first responders. We are down there building the buildings. We are down there taking care of the flood victims and tornado victims and that sort of thing. We are out there planting new ministries that feed the homeless and take care of people. We are out there doing good things. Is it possible that maybe some of those things we started the wrong way? We started out doing it because Christians do these things. God is saying maybe if you would have started at a place of rest, maybe you wouldn’t have just produced a few good things. You would have produced a bunch of good things. Ministries that don’t just last for a few weeks, a few months, or a few years, but ministries that will impact all of eternity. He is saying start by abiding. You want to bear much fruit, make sure you start by abiding. Make sure you start by remaining and resting in me.
I was thinking about 15 years ago I heard a professor, Howard Hendricks, from Dallas Theological Seminary. He was addressing a group of graduating seminary students. The words he said just always stuck with me. He says “My greatest fear is that you students will be a success at the wrong thing.” In other words you will get this degree and you will go out and start doing all this stuff because that is what Christians do. They just go out and start doing stuff. He says you have this acre over here that you planted and produced a nice little bushel or two. If you would have went over here you would have had a ton of grapes. Why did you do it so fast? Why don’t you start at a place of resting? But you might have figured out by now that in order to abide, in order to rest, in order to remain, it means that you have to take the most precious commodity in our life; it’s time. It requires time in God’s presence. We are not wired that way. We are not. We are not wired to go and simply rest. To stop our activity and just listen to God. I talked to my friend last night and he reminded me of a quote by a guy named Henry Blackaby who wrote the book Experiencing God. He said in the world the slogan is don’t just sit there, do something. In God’s vineyard it is don’t just do something, sit there. Do you see the difference? He says sit there and take time and listen to me so that when you finally do go out, the stuff you bear will be the right stuff. It will be the good fruit. It will be the abundant fruit.
I can bring this personally home to me because a few months ago, it was actually December, I found a window of about two days and I said I need to get away. I need to take a two-day retreat. I actually got a coupon good for two days at this great retreat center in central Pennsylvania near Shanksville. I went there but I went there with a goal. My goal was to carve out a vision for the church for next year. I was feeling that the vision I had several years ago has kind of gone flat. Nobody really knows about the values. It is just not happening. There is frustration. The church is growing but something just is not right. I felt it was time to go back and really craft out a nice mission with all the bullet points, with all the volunteer requirements, the space requirements and all that sort of stuff. Before I left, I started grabbing books. By the time I left I had ten books with me. I get over there and I sit in this nice little room overlooking the countryside ready to open my books, and God says why don’t you take a few minutes and abide. I can do that God. I get it. I am a pastor. I have to spend time in prayer and I have to spend time in the Bible, and I have to spend time in worship, and I will do that. So I did that. Then when I got ready to do something else, he said no you are not done. It is about noon. Before I know it, it is 3 o’clock. Before I know it, it is evening. He is just saying don’t open a book, just abide. That is what I did. The funny thing is, the more I did it, the less rested I felt. In fact, the more I abided, the more I felt this big knot in the back of my neck. I don’t get a lot of those. But I felt this knot building that I could not get away from. It just bugged me. I was determined just to continue to listen to God. God is saying don’t open a book so I am going to do this. I am just going to sit there. I sat there through the night. I prayed. I worshiped. I went to bed. When I got up the knot was gone, but it came right back. I am sitting there getting frustrated. I am saying okay God I am doing what I am supposed to do. I am not opening a book, but I have this knot in my neck. The least you can do is take away this knot that you gave to me. He says wait a minute. I didn’t give you a knot. You gave yourself a knot. He says my burden is not heavy. My yoke is not heavy. It reminded me of Matthew 11 where it says “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Chuck, do you get that? You are causing the knot. What is causing the knot is your constant need to do. Because I am pushing forward and he is holding me back, I am developing this knot in the back of my neck. Clear as day because I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to rest. Especially if you are a driven personality you have a hard time stopping. He said no. You need to stop and you need to rest. The secret of productivity is to remain in him. To practice the presence of God. To sit for a time in God’s presence. As you are a good branch and you sit there that is all well and good. Unfortunately, during that time, he may speak to you. In fact, he might start telling you I am going to do some pruning of you.
The next point is it requires pruning and cleansing. In the next verse he says “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.” As I shared earlier, when you own a vineyard, you are supposed to prune it because all these branches go everywhere. They might have buds on them still but a lot of the buds won’t produce fruit again. What happen is if you don’t reduce it, all the energy from the vine goes out to these unfruitful parts of the branch. You have to cut them off. What is true in the physical vineyard is also true in the spiritual. You have to allow God to come in and do some pruning to your life. The first verse is kind of interesting because it says “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.” Basically, I think it is in verse 6 that he says what he does with that. He throws it into the fire to be burned. You can draw your own conclusions there. I am not going to get into that because I am assuming if you are a Christian here you are probably bearing some fruit. I am going to give everybody the benefit of the doubt that you are bearing some fruit. However, you have fruit that you might have borne in the past. You have things sprouting from good buds but over time those buds are no longer producing fruit but yet you are hanging on to them because that is part of your identity. That is who I am. I can’t let go of that bud. God says you have to clip it off. I was reading that I guess a branch could have 12 buds and you have to clip off sometimes 10 buds to end up with two productive buds. He is saying maybe it is time that you clip off some of those unproductive areas of the branch. You say what would that be in the spiritual life? It could be anything. It could be relationships. It could be Christian relationships that maybe you thought had all the potential to bear good fruit. In fact, you were going to spend the rest of your life with this person and God says it is not working out. Clipped off. There is goes. Or maybe it could be a job situation. Maybe you had a job you started a few years ago. You prayed for it and God answered the prayer. He gave you a great job with great finances, a great career path. Everything is going well. You were able to build a house. Get some savings. But then after a while that job that was an answer to a prayer became now a form of slavery. Because you are still in this tight job that has control of you 24 hours a day, you are not able to produce fruit in other areas so he says cut that thing off. It might even be an area of ministry. I am not just talking about paid ministries. Everybody here should be involved in some form of ministry. But you have been involved in ministries in the past that maybe at some point were bearing fruit. Maybe you were seeing lives coming to Christ. Maybe you were taking care of the homeless or whatever it was. You were bearing good fruit. Then all of a sudden you saw it dry up. All of a sudden it was gone. But yet you want to hang on to that. God says cut it off. Then there are those branches the really thick ones that the cheap clippers won’t work so you have to bring out the loppers. You have held on to them so tight you have to take the loppers to it. The good news is even though we think that is painful, we have to remember the purpose is so that you will bear much fruit. That is why he is doing it. That is why you are going through the pruning. As the keeper of the vineyard, he wants for you to bear good fruit.
Not only does it require pruning. It also says we need to get a little cleaning. We talked about this a few weeks ago. Occasionally, we get kind of dirtied up by the world. In the vineyard, when the vine touches the ground and sits on the ground too long, it attracts disease and the bugs and all this kind of stuff that can yield an unhealthy branch and possibly even kill it. It is the same way in our spiritual life. We have to allow God to come in and sometimes cleanse us of all that stuff that is really damaging our root system or damaging the branch. That is the second key, the second secret that we find in the story of the vineyard. It is the secret of holiness. This may come as news to a lot of you, but as Christians, we are called to be holy. In fact, Paul calls each of us saints. We don’t like to use the term saints but that is what Paul calls us. Saints are simply people that have been separated by God for a specific purpose for a specific time for a specific place. That means we are set apart from the world to do the works of God. We are set apart people. The technical word is sanctified. Sanctified is a setting apart so that we might become the holy people of God. You think what does that mean and how does that work? It is the idea that if remaining in the vine will yield a productive vineyard, then could it be that remaining in the vine would also produce holiness? We see in a verse that it does. Unfortunately, I can’t take you to the book of John. I have to take you to another book of John, 1 John 3 to show you this. 1 John 3:5-6 says “But you know that he appears so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning.” The one John is referring to is the He that appeared obviously is Jesus. He says he might take away our sins and in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. So here we see the secret of holiness. In fact, what is interesting, I highlighted the word “lives” because the underlying Greek word is the exact same word that is translated in the gospel of John as remains. It is ameteo. So I can just swap it out and put remains there. No one who remains in him keeps on sinning.
You say Chuck I have been a Christian all my life and I sin all the time. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t work for me. I spend my quiet time and it doesn’t work. We need to rethink our approach to not sinning. This is where it gets a little bit deep but follow me. Stay with me for a minute. He made it clear “But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins.” We know that Christ appeared in order that he may take away the sins of the world on the cross. In Christianity, there is this idea of righteousness. It is called imputed righteousness. When Christ came down, took away our sins as we accept Christ as Lord, what it does is he gives us our righteousness. Specifically what he does is kind of grafts us into him. It is a picture of a vine with a slit on it and then a branch being grafted in. That is what is going on at this point. Then here is the logic that flows from there. If the character of the vine is holiness, then the character of the branch is holiness or should be holiness. So as we remain in the vine what happens is we become holy. We become sanctified just by virtue of remaining in the vine, staying connected to the vine. As we stay connected to the vine, just as we are connected to a person we begin to take on a lot of their character traits, what happens is when we are connected to the vine, we begin to take on the character of Christ. The holiness of Christ. The sap of holiness begins to come out and finds its way into the branch that has been grafted in. If we are willing to stick with him and not just give up the minute we walk out of the baptistery, if we are willing to stay with Christ and abide in him and remain in him what happens is that graft gets stronger and stronger so you can’t even tell the vine from the branch because they are the same character. The sin that was in that branch, what we call the Adam nature, the sin that we brought in, that is slowly going away. The power of that sin is just gone. It is slowly going away just by that. The good news about it is it goes back to we don’t have to do anything. We don’t have to do anything but remain in him because God will do the work. A verse that I read almost every week here, the benediction. It is 1 Thessalonians 5:23 where Paul says “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.” Not Lori will do it. Not Jim will do it. Not Bill will do it. Not Chuck will do it. He, the God above, he will sanctify you. You can’t do anything. You can’t but just abide. It is so funny because what do we do. We become a Christian not by works. We know it is not by works because we can’t work enough for God. So we come in by faith. I am in there. I believe that Jesus died on the cross. By the blood of the lamb I have been healed. I have been made a Christian. I have been made brand new. We come in by faith. Then what happens is we switch off the faith button and turn back on the works button. We automatically say I am a Christian now so I can’t do this. I can’t drink. I can’t smoke. I can’t chew. I can’t run with those who do. That is what we do. We turn on this to-do button and God is saying it’s done. You can’t do anything. All you have to do is remain in me. All you need to do is abide. Stick close to me and I will do the work. I will clean up the mess. I will clean up your heart. If you are familiar with the Old Testament you know the story of Bathsheba and the story of David. David made a bad choice with a guy’s wife. The guy was out on the battlefield. He sat back home and had an affair with Bathsheba. He did a bad thing. He didn’t go to God and say I got to get better at this thing. Teach me so I won’t go out and have an affair again because it’s not good. It didn’t result in good things. He didn’t say that. He says in Psalm 51 Lord just create in me a clean heart. Do the work in my heart. Change the thing in my heart that caused me to do that thing in the first place. Change my heart. Turn my affections towards you and away from lust. That is what he asked for. He didn’t say I am going to go out and not do these things. He said change my heart. Do a fresh thing in me. Make me new. Make me clean. We actually see something very similar in the book of Romans. I don’t have this on the screen but in Romans 8, if you are familiar with Paul, he gets kind of upset with himself. He is like I am doing these things that I don’t want to do and I am not doing the things I want to do. What is going on here? He says in verse 14 “We know that the law is spiritual but I am unspiritual. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate to do I do. If I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me. That is my sinful nature.” Then he goes on to say what is the solution? In about verse 25 he says “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Because it is Jesus Christ our Lord, he provided the spirit that I may walk with the spirit and that I may walk by Christ and not sin. In fact, that is what it is all about. It is that close connection with the spirit. He goes on to say in verse 8:5 “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the spirit have their minds set on what the spirit desires.” It is the setting of your mind. The more you are in the vine. The more you are close to God through the power of the spirit the more that happens is you begin to gradually have the desires of God. When you are walking down the road or walking wherever you go, where you are tempted to sin, where you are tempted to engage in activity you shouldn’t be engaging in or getting caught up in addictions, and you are going past that stuff, and because you have the spirit of God sitting next to you, you have his desires and he says I want nothing to do with that stuff. You ever notice that when you become a Christian a lot of those desires pass away. It is all really just sticking close to the vine. You stick close to the vine and God’s desires become your desires.
We see in the parable of the vine we see the idea that the secret to productivity is remaining on the vine. We see that the secret of our holiness is to remain on the vine. Finally, we want to see that the secret of getting whatever we wish is found in the secret of the vine. We remain in the vine, he is saying we will get whatever we wish. He says “If you remain in me and my words remain in me, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.” You say wow that doesn’t make sense to me because I prayed for all sorts of things and I didn’t get them. I prayed and prayed and prayed and I didn’t get those things. What is going on here? What we find is Jesus is using hyperbole. He is using a little bit of exaggeration to make his point. The operative word here is the little two-letter word called “if”. If you remain in the vine, you will get whatever you want. If you remain in me and my words remain in me, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you. How does that work? The idea that as you remain in the vine, just like your desire to sin goes away what happens is you get rid of those desires and you start taking on the desires of God. You are spending time with God and you begin to know the heart of God. You begin to know the desires of God. You begin to know what kind of fruit he wants you to produce. What happens is his desires become your desires. Your desires become kingdom desires based on kingdom values and based on kingdom living. What he says is now we are in line. Now when you pray you are going to pray in line with me and I am going to give you that fruit. I am going to just keep giving it to you. It says he gives us whatever we wish, but it may not look like the thing we wished for because we don’t really know how to pray. If we are praying in accordance with the spirit and at the core level the thing we are praying for is in line with God’s will even in the remotest way, he will give it to us.
In closing, I go back to this retreat, which was just a phenomenal eye opener for me. I went to this retreat and I went there with the idea of crafting out this 50-page document that was going to set the direction for the church hopefully for years to come. I got my books out and wanted to study and never got around to it. Once again, God just says don’t just do something. Just sit. Just sit and abide. So I did it. It was like an hour or so before I was ready to leave. I was thinking I am going to go back there and a few people know that I went on this retreat and they are kind of expecting something. Here I am, I just abided for two days. That doesn’t always sell very well. I am sitting there praying. Honest to God truth. I don’t know if it was one minute or 15 minutes. I really don’t. I can’t pinpoint it. I know it was a short period of time. I was still praising God. I was worshipping. I put on headphones on. I can’t sing a note but I put the headphones on and nobody can hear me and I will just sing. As I am sitting there praising God, I said God would you do me a favor and accommodate me in my weakness. I have to come back with something. My heart is that I would produce something that would be able to bear good fruit for the church and just like that he dumped on me what I would say a vision for the future of the church. If I carry it through, if I work it through, I actually think it will bear fruit for years to come. He just dumped it on me in a way I couldn’t even imagine it. Just clear as day. Just like that. He accommodated because he knew that was my wish. That was the desire in my heart. Because I was obedient and I sat with him and I prayed with him first and I abided with him and I slowed myself down enough to do that, he accommodated it. It doesn’t always take a two-day retreat. It can be ten minutes here and five minutes here. It basically is your desire to spend time and abide in him. He knows your heart. He knows we are busy but if you make the attempt throughout your day, morning, evening, or whatever it takes to abide and to spend time with him, he is going to speak with you. He is going to give you the desires of your heart because remaining in him does not mean inactivity. He will start feeding you stuff and you better have a pen in hand because he is going to give it to you fast. He will just keep giving it and giving it and giving it. It’s not inactivity, but it is abiding.
In closing, we think back about the production of a successful vineyard. It is a little tricky. There are a lot of secrets to making a successful vineyard. I don’t think I would want to go out and start a vineyard. It would be very hard to make a good living. But the good news is that when we are planting a vineyard in the spiritual realm, it is all laid out there. It is all laid out there in John 15. Specifically, it is laid out there in John 15:5 where it says “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.” Let us pray.
