Who Is This Jesus?
14. He is the Vine, We are the Branches
John 15:1-8
Main idea: All Christians must stay connected to Christ and submit to spiritual pruning in order to bear spiritual fruit.
INTRO:
Q: What sound does a grape make when an elephant steps on it?
A: None. It just lets out a little wine.
Q: What’s large and purple and lives in the ocean?
A: Moby Grape.
Q: How can you tell the difference between a grape and an elephant if you’re color blind?
A: Dance on it for a while. If you don’t get any wine, it’s an elephant.
OK I know those were bad! But today we’re going to talk about grapes, grapevines, and pruning. Why? Because we’re looking at John 15 and in this passage Christ says he is the vine and we are the branches. His main point is that…
All Christians must stay connected to Christ and submit to spiritual pruning in order to bear spiritual fruit.
John 15:1-8 (NLT)
1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. 3You have already been pruned for greater fruitfulness by the message I have given you. 4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful apart from me.
5"Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. 6Anyone who parts from me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. 7But if you stay joined to me and my words remain in you, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted! 8My true disciples produce much fruit. This brings great glory to my Father.
How does a grapevine grow? Apart from watching the movie “a Walk in the clouds” a few times, I don’t have that much experience with grape vines, so I did some research this week. For any of the rest of you who’ve never grown a grapevine, here’s a few basic concepts that will be instrumental in helping us apply this rich teaching of Jesus.
The anatomy of a grapevine.
TRUNK – the main vertical part.
CORDON or ARM – the horizontal growth, usually attached to wires for support.
CANE or BRANCH – the vertical growth off of the cordon or arm.
BUD – the small nodules which will develop into fruit bearing branches.
What do we learn about our spiritual lives through the grapevine?
1. I must stay connected to Christ to bear spiritual fruit.
…a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful apart from me. (v. 4)
…Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. (v. 5)
• Apart from Jesus Christ – what can we do? NOTHING. Nothing of eternal value that is. We prove by our actions that we can do all sorts of meaningless and fruitless activities without Him. But if we want to bear fruit in our lives that blesses God and blesses other people – we’ve GOT to stay connected to Him.
• This may seem obvious – but sometimes the most obvious lessons are the ones we overlook. As an individual I’ve got to be connected to Christ for my life to have any spiritual fruit growing. As a church we’ve GOT to be connected to him in order to hope to develop spiritual fruit that will change the spiritual landscape.
• How do we stay connected: Abiding in his word and prayer.
• God wants to make us fruitful – but it is our responsibility to stay connected to him and not wander off on our own.
TRANS: But not only do we need to stay connected to Jesus to bear spiritual fruit…
2. I must submit to spiritual pruning in order to bear spiritual fruit.
Again, since I didn’t know much about the subject, I did some research this week and here is some of what I found out about pruning grapevines.
• Pruning is necessary for fruit bearing.
A vine that is not pruned will grow out of control. It will be long, tangled, and bushy. But the vine will not have enough energy left to produce fruit since all its energy is spent in developing size and foliage.
APPLICATION: Do you ever have the feeling that in your life you’re doing more and more and accomplishing less and less? Maybe we need to learn something from this lesson of the vine. When we just keep running and doing more and more – we will hamper our fruitfulness. All our energy will go into maintaining our activities (keeping the plates spinning) – so that we won’t have energy to develop fruit that will really make a difference in the kingdom of God.
Sometimes we need to take a look at our lives (individual, family, small group, churchwide) and ask ourselves if we’ve allowed our “growth” to get out of control. Are we doing things because they are fruit producing – or just because that’s the way we’ve done it so far?
The grapevine teaches us that we will be more productive if we limit our areas of activity and expansion.
• Pruning must be severe. “With any pruning system, at least 85 to 90 percent of the one-year old wood will be removed….This will allow the grapevines to maintain their structure…and enhance fruit quality.”
In order for a grapevine to reach it’s maximum effectiveness in producing fruit – the pruning process must be severe – almost ruthless. If dead or diseased parts of the branch are not removed, they will invite insects or rot to infect the entire vine. Not only are dead or dying branches removed from the vine, but also those parts of the branch that are bearing fruit need extreme pruning as well.
When God sees us, he sees our maximum potential for fruitfulness in his kingdom – and he knows how to get us to that point. As he looks at you perhaps there are parts of your life that are inviting disease and death into your life. Habits that you cling to. Sins that you love more than your Lord. Relationships that pull you away from obedience to His word.
But its not just these dead and dying areas of our lives that need pruning – even those areas that are producing fruit need pruning in order for us to be more fruitful in the future. I’ll explain this more as we look at the next thing I learned about pruning a grapevine…
• Pruning must be done regularly. Fruit does not grow on wood that is more than a year old. Fruit develops only on new growth. Unless the vine is pruned annually, it will grow out of control and lose it’s fruit bearing ability.
Did you catch that? The fruit only grows upon wood that is new growth. Last years parts of the vines may grow more vine – but it won’t bear fruit.
How does this apply? We need to be continually seeking new growth in our relationship with the Lord – because it is out of this new growth that we’ll start having an effect on our world around us.
We cannot be content to keep trying to do whatever seemed to work last year, or the year before that. We need to ask the Lord to help us grow TODAY in our relationship with Him.
Peter wrote about this…
2Pet. 1:5-8 …make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
No matter how successful and fruitful our lives or our church have been in the past we need to ask the Lord to prune us back on a regular basis and start a NEW work in us so that we might create a new harvest of righteousness and of souls for His Kingdom.
We dare not sit back as a church or as individuals and think that just because we’ve been blessed by the Lord in the past He will continue to bless us. We need to offer ourselves to him and say – Lord take my successes and prune them back so that I’m just as dependent upon you as I was before I had those successes.
ILLUS: Talking with a potential church planter this week about what was most difficult when I first started out. That was I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing a lot of the time. And I HAD to be on my knees. It HAD to be the Lord coming through because I didn’t have the resources. I need that kind of dependence upon Him every day – no matter how “successful” our church ministry might look.
I’ve got one more insight I gained this week about pruning grapevines.
• Pruning is done by the gardener. Pruning is tricky work – and takes a good amount of knowledge. It’s best done by someone who knows what they are doing.
Our application of this truth is simple. God is the gardener. We’re not. We’re branches. And one branch can’t say to another – “You really need pruning!”
God is the only one who has the right to come and prune areas of our lives back. Because he is the one with the knowledge of what we’ll look like once we reach our potential.
You see, if it were up to us branches, we’d never prune ourselves. Too painful. If you look at a vineyard after it has been pruned in the early spring – it looks like a bunch of dead twigs. But the master gardener has in his minds eye the day of harvest. He can already see the beautiful, plentiful bunches of grapes that will soon be growing out of the spots he’s pruned. So it is with you and me.
CONCLUSION: Why would I want to do this – being pruned doesn’t sound so fun!
The end result of submitting to God’s pruning is JOY, not pain! (verse 15:11)
10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last
Application Questions:
Is your life bearing fruit?
Does God need to prune you in some areas?
Do you need some new growth?
