Well, I hope that everyone had a merry Christmas. I hope that in the midst of the festivities that we didn’t lose sight of the incredible truth of why we celebrate Christmas in the first place. That truth of course being that God the Son, Jesus Christ, stepped out of the glory of heaven, to be born as a child here on Earth, with the purpose of coming to save us all from our sin. That’s pretty crazy when you think about it, and while the food, the family, the friends, the presents, and everything else are all a really good time, at the end of the day they don’t have anything on that. The Savior, promised and waited for, over thousands of years; He came, and it’s His story that we have been studying through the Gospel of Matthew.
But today we’re still on a little break from Matthew and we’ll get back into it next week. Today I felt like we needed to just stop and set the precedent or set the plan or direction for this new year. Today is January first after all. I’m not talking about making new year’s resolutions or anything like that, but the turning point of a new year is such a clearly identifiable moment of time, that I think is useful as a marker to evaluate growth with.
It’s a great time to ask: what’s happened, what have I learned, and how I have grown in this last year? But it’s also a great time to fix our focus on growing into the new year in front of us.
So again, not in Matthew today, but let’s go together to the Gospel of John, because I think there is a great passage here that can set that plan for us.
Read John 15:1-8
When Jesus originally spoke these words, He was speaking to His disciples, but we’re hopefully following Jesus as His disciples now as well, and so it’s completely applicable to us too. And as we begin looking into this passage, we see that there are really three different people involved in this picture that Jesus is relaying to His disciples. There is Jesus, and here He calls Himself the “True Vine”, there is God the Father, Who Jesus calls the “Vinedresser”, and then there are the branches which are people that are connecting to the True Vine of Jesus Christ.
This imagery that Jesus chose would have been really relatable to all of the people in the room, because Israel was full of vineyards and grapevines all over the country at that time. These guys would have clearly understood each of these roles, or each of these parts of the grapevine and the care that they received. For us, there are some grapevines still growing out in Coachella, I’ve driven by them a number of times, but it’s not something that we would probably be as well versed in as these guys.
When Jesus talks about the vine, He is talking about the main plant of the grapevine all the way down to the roots in the soil, it’s the main part of the plant, it’s the life of the plant. And then He talks about branches, and these are little offshoots of life that grow out of the main vine. These aren’t plants on their own, and they wouldn’t survive on their own, they only grow out of the main vine. So, Jesus is the main vine, the life of the plant, and then all of us are the branches that sprout off of the main vine. But then there is also God the Father, Who is the vinedresser, and He’s like the farmer Who cares for the whole plant, Who prunes the plant, Who cuts off bad branches, and Who nurtures the plant for its greatest potential fruitfulness.
We see that role clearly in verse 2.
Read John 15:2
When branches aren’t bearing any fruit, the Vinedresser takes them away from the vine, but branches that are bearing fruit are pruned and cared for so that, ultimately, they bear more and more fruit. The Father is actively doing these things as the vinedresser, or the farmer, that is working towards the branches bearing the most fruit possible. It isn’t good for the vine for fruitless branches to still be there, they don’t help in the fruit production, it’s also necessary for pruning to take place so that a fruitful branch can become more fruitful.
FRUITFULNESS IS THE GOAL OF THIS WHOLE PICTURE, and it involves the Father, it involves Jesus, and it involves us, so we better pay attention.
When we think about where we have come from in this last year, and when we set our sights on where we are headed into this next year, then we need to align our goals with God’s goals for us. God’s goal for us is to bear God glorifying fruit and we need to be about that.
So how do we get there?
The answer is the point of this entire passage, but it is summed up really well in verse 4.
Read John 15:4
Jesus says that we can’t bear fruit by ourselves, a branch can’t bear fruit without its connection to the vine. But what is so cool here is that Jesus explains this connection as a two-way street. There is the aspect of our abiding in Him, but it’s followed with the understanding that He will abide in us as well.
And what does abide mean?
The biblical understanding of the word ABIDE in this passage means to stay, to be present, to not leave, to be so rooted in something that you aren’t going anywhere. So, Jesus is saying, be like that with Me. Stay with Jesus, be present with Jesus, don’t leave Jesus for other things, be so rooted in Jesus that you aren’t going anywhere else.
The Bible uses a lot of different ways to describe our relationship with God, sometimes it’s like Parent and child, sometimes it’s Shepherd and sheep, but then there’s this vine and branch analogy. This is really the most dependent relationship description out of the three. A child can still live their life without their parent, a sheep can still wander aimlessly and live without the Shepherd, but a branch cannot survive at all, much less bear fruit, without being attached to the vine. The very life of Christ flows out of the vine and into the branches, into us, and Jesus is very clear here in verses 4 and 5 that without that real connection to Him, then we can’t do anything fruitful. The branch is dead without the life of the vine.
I think of Ephesians 2 which says that we were dead in our sin, but God, Who is rich in mercy, and because He loved us so much, He made us alive together in Christ. That was the moment that our branch connected to the life of the vine. That was the moment that the potential for fruitfulness and for God’s glory started in our lives. And it’s what Jesus is explaining in John 15.
He says in these verses that if we abide in Him and if we listen to His words and if His words abide or stay with us then verse 8 is going to happen.
Read John 15:8
It says that God will be glorified, we will bear MUCH FRUIT, and that we will be Jesus’ disciples. He just told us how we get to where we need to go. It’s completely centered on our personal relationship with and proximity to Jesus.
There’s a warning in this passage and there’s a path forward. The warning is this, Jesus says that His Father is going to care for the vine and if there are dead branches, or fruitless branches, then they are going to get removed and destroyed. I will always put forward the truth of scripture that when someone is saved, that salvation cannot be lost, so that’s not what is being talked about here. This is talking about dead branches, or spiritually dead people, that seemingly attached to the vine, but the fact that they weren’t making any fruit showed that the life of the vine, or the life of Christ, was never in that branch, or that person, was never saved and surrendered to Jesus, and so they get cut off.
But that doesn’t have to happen, and with that warning as I often do, I would encourage you to check yourself. A good branch is only a good branch because that person has turned from their sin and asked Jesus to save them. The good branch sees Jesus as LORD and Savior of their life, because He died, was buried, and rose again for that salvation.
If you haven’t turned from your sin, if you haven’t asked Jesus to save you, if you think you’re still running the show and don’t see Him as Lord and Savior. Then you’re not one of the good branches, and the warning is there that the Father is going to cut away the bad ones. So please take that seriously and let’s absolutely talk about it if you want to. If you have any questions at all, please never hesitate to ask them.
But maybe we are that good branch, but maybe we’ve been slipping, maybe we have messed up in some way, maybe things have been hard, maybe we just feel like we’re in a fruitless season, maybe we just haven’t been heading towards our potential fruitfulness. A good branch might still have an off season, but that’s where God’s pruning comes into play, that’s when God maybe cuts and moves and works and gets that branch back to its fruit bearing potential.
Our hope here at Base Church is to be a bunch of fruitful branches connected permanently to the true living vine of Jesus Christ.
And so how does all of this affect our 2023 plan?
Our plan at the individual, and church together level, is to absolutely ABIDE IN CHRIST. If we want to become fruitful, then there is no other way to get there. There’s no church equation or methodology, there’s no specific book series or study, I’m not saying that there’s no benefit to any of those things, there can be, but our core element needs to be personal relationship and proximity to Christ.
Please hear this, that our life source, isn’t another person, it’s not this church, it’s not me teaching here, it’s not anything else, but Jesus, and Jesus only. There’s absolutely benefits from these other things, but life, and fruitfulness, flows out of Him, from the Vine into the branches. From His life, into ours.
We can’t do long distance relationship with Jesus, we can’t just keep Jesus as an acquaintance, we can’t just know the name, but not the truth, the life, the character, the words, of this One, named Jesus, Who came to save us. He said, abide in me, and He will abide in us, He said follow me, and He said He will be with us always.
Do we want to abide in Him, do we really want to follow Him?
Are there other things getting in the way of that happening?
Would we be willing to ask the Father to begin His pruning process in us, to cut away, to change, or anything that He wants, so that we might bear MUCH FRUIT as it says there?
At the end of the day, do we see God as worthy, of whatever it might take, to get to the point of our greatest fruitfulness, and His greatest glory, in our life?
If we don’t see Him as worthy, if we don’t hold Him higher than everything else in life, then we’re never going to be completely serious, in our discipleship, and our pursuit of growth. How can we abide in Him, when we’re trying to make sure that we are abiding in 3, 4, 5, or 17 other things as well? Real growth here requires a very specific focus, with Jesus captivating and directing every other part of our life. But is He worth that?
I want to read the Apostle Paul’s answer to that question.
Read Romans 12:1-2
When Paul considered what it would take, or even more so, what God deserved of Him and others that would seek to follow Jesus, he said essentially, that I plead with, every one of you, to give your lives completely to God. Not to die as a sacrifice like Jesus did for us, but to really deny ourselves and live all of this life for Him. Paul described that as, our “reasonable service”, or “reasonable worship” in some translations, there in verse 1. Paul basically says that giving absolutely everything to the Lord is actually the least that we can do, it’s the only “reasonable” response in light of what He has done for us.
This is the same Paul that said essentially, if I’m alive, I’m living for Christ, but if I die, I’m better off, because I get to be with Him. This guy believed this completely, and if we have any understanding at all of our salvation from sin, death, judgement, wrath, and eternity away from God, if we get that at all, then we have to come to the same conclusion.
So, let me ask this question as when we consider Jesus’ teaching in John 15: How can God be more glorified through our lives in 2023, than He was, last year?
We have to get closer to Him, we have to get closer and not moved or distracted away by other things. There are so many things in this world that are seeking to take our attention away from Him. But also, maybe your branch isn’t even attached to the vine yet, well you need to turn to Jesus and get connected. Jesus said that we can’t do anything without Him.
But as we seek to get closer to Him, we can do that together, but we have to make sure that our connection to Jesus isn’t just through me teaching, or just through the church, or through someone or something else, our connection and our relationship needs to be, one on one, with Jesus, and growing for a purpose.
A purpose to bear much fruit that gives God glory.
But sometimes I think these fruit can be kind of ambiguous. Like what in the world are these fruit? And I’ll try to give a simple definition of how I see it.
I see these fruit as really any action in this life that is made because we understand Who God is and what He has said. If I understand Who He is, then I want to do things that line up with His character and His purposes. When I understand what He has said, then I want to listen to those things and actively obey all of it.
Each of those actions that live up to Him and act out His words are a piece of fruit sprouted out of our branch. It’s the loving of another, because God first loved us. It’s denying sin, because God is holy. It’s acting out His words and His character so we can be more like Jesus. It’s teaching our kids and others these truths. It’s being an example of righteousness. It’s our days becoming progressively filled more and more with little fruits that show that we really do have this relationship with Jesus and that His life is visibly flowing through us.
Jesus once again said in John 15 that if we stick with Him completely, we listen to His words, if we ABIDE IN HIM, then in verse 8: God will be glorified, we will bear MUCH FRUIT, and we will be Jesus’ disciples.
I don’t think we need to over complicate the game plan; I think we need to roll with His plan, and that’s how we grow in 2023. My prayer is that if God carries us to the beginning of 2024 that we will be able to look back and see real, tangible, God glorifying growth at an individual level, first of all, and also for us together, as a church. We’re not perfect and we probably still won’t be perfect next year. I do believe in a God that can bring radical transformation in a moment, but generally we see growth and maturity happen over time, and I’m completely confident, because Jesus said so, that if we draw closer to Jesus and stay there, if we ABIDE, then we will absolutely get there, to grow, to be more fruitful, for His glory.