The True Vine

Transcript

Good morning. Well, this morning we are jumping back into our sermon series on the Gospel of John. And so if you’d be so kind to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John chapter 15. This morning we’re gonna be looking at verses 1 through 17. If you don’t have a Bible, there are some Bibles in the front seat, in that basket below. If you don’t own a Bible, you’re welcome to take that home with you as our gift to you. John 15 verses 1 through 17.

I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. 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. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 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. 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. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you,

ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 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. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.

For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you pray with me?

Father, we do thank you for your word. We do thank you for your word. Apart from you and your word, we can do nothing. And so we pray this morning that you would give us the help that we need. We confess this morning that we are, in every way, dependent upon you to know anything, to learn anything, to be changed, to be conformed into the image of Jesus. We pray that you would give us the aid of the Holy Spirit to open up our eyes and our hearts to the truth of your word. We pray these things in the mighty name of Jesus, the true vine. Amen.

Life Comes from the Vine

Well, one of the words that we hear all the time, especially in Christian spaces, is the word fruit. We talk about living fruitful lives, living in such a way as to demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit. We want to have fruitful ministries. We want to experience fruitful seasons. Admittedly, we want to see fruit in our marriages, and when we say that, what we mean is we want relationships marked by patience, love, faithfulness, and endurance. We want fruit in our singleness, meaning we want to be marked by holiness, contentment, deep devotion to Christ, and love that is freely poured out for the good of others. We want fruit in our parenting, meaning we want to raise kids to grow in Christ-likeness, not just outwardly, but inwardly. We want fruit in our church, meaning we want to be a people marked by flourishing ministry. We want people coming to faith,

and we want people growing in their faith. All of those things are good and right. Fruit is a biblical word, and it’s a good desire to have. But if we’re honest, many of us in our pursuit of fruit feel exhausted, not lazy tired, not indifferent tired, but trying tired. The kind of tired that comes from trying to do the right things for a long time with little fruit and diminishing joy, where we’re busy, committed, and involved, but we’re quietly just worn out. And that exhaustion raises a deeper question, a question I think Jesus puts directly in front of us in John 15. And that question is, where does real spiritual fruit actually come from? And when I ask that, I’m not speaking simply about the appearance of fruit with short-term results, not spiritual busyness that looks impressive from the outside, but is rotting on the inside.

I’m asking about lasting, God-glorifying, and soul-sustaining fruit. Because the Bible is clear, not all fruit is good fruit. Not all fruit lasts. Not all spiritual activity is fruitful. And what’s crazy is how Jesus answers that question in our text. He doesn’t give his disciples a particular strategy or a regiment to follow, or a program for maximum fruit. He doesn’t even begin with commands. Instead, he gives them an image of a vine. And that’s an interesting place to start, especially because Jesus is speaking to men who are about to lose him physically. Within hours, Jesus will be arrested. By the next day, he’ll be crucified. And if there was ever a moment to say, here’s what you need to do when I’m gone, this would be it. But instead, Jesus says, abide in me. And what he’s about to show them and us is this. Life, the kind of life that bears fruit,

doesn’t come from trying harder. Fruit doesn’t come from doing more, and joy doesn’t come from spiritual hustle. It comes from staying connected to the right source. Which means this passage is not primarily a call to effort, it’s a call to deep dependence. A call to be tethered to the very source of life. And that matters for us this morning because many of us hear the words bear fruit and immediately we feel pressure. Pressure to measure up. Pressure to prove ourselves to other people. Pressure to fix what feels unproductive in our lives. But Jesus does not speak this passage to us to crush us as weary disciples. He speaks it to us to reattach us when we feel the pressure to perform. And so if you’re here this morning and you are feeling tired, distracted, spiritually dry or stretched thin from trying to produce fruit in your own strength,

this passage is for you. You’re exactly who Jesus is speaking to this morning because before he ever calls you to produce fruit, he calls you to remain in him. And my hope for us this morning is that as we move through this text, we wouldn’t just remain in him, but we would find rest in him and that we would find joy in him. And so if you’re the note-taking type, I’ve broken up this passage into three points or three mile markers on the path to joy. Verses one through eight, we’ll look at life comes from the vine, verses nine through 11, love is where life lives, and verses 12 through 17, fruit makes love grow. Okay, so let’s begin with our first point, life comes from the vine. Jesus begins this section here not with a command, but with an image and an intervention and with an identity statement.

Verse one, he says, I am the true vine and my father is the vinedresser. And that’s not only a perfect image or illustration, it’s an image that is consistent with how God has always dealt with his people. Throughout the scriptures, the vine was one of the most common images used for Israel. God planted Israel, God protected Israel, God tended Israel like a vineyard. But again and again, when God came looking for fruit in Israel, there was none to be found. Isaiah tells us that God looked for the fruit of justice, but instead found bloodshed. He looked for the fruit of righteousness, but instead heard cries of distress. Ezekiel tells us that Israel became so unproductive as a people that the vine wasn’t even useful for building, it was only fit for burning. So when Jesus stands before his disciples and says, I am the true vine,

he’s not just offering a comforting illustration, he’s making a massive theological claim concerning his identity and his intervention. He’s saying, where Israel failed, I will succeed. Where God’s people could not bear fruit, I will. Where humanity could not live faithfully before God, I will. In other words, Jesus is not simply connected to God’s purposes, he embodies them. And what that tells us is that fruit does not start with us. It starts with him intervening on our behalf. And then notice what Jesus adds after identifying himself as the true vine. He says, and my father is the vine dresser. And that tells us something about how God works. The father is not absent from the vineyard. He’s not distant from the process of making us fruitful. Sometimes Christians tend to view the father as a sort of distant or uninvolved member of the Trinity, especially when it comes to our fruit.

That it’s just Jesus and the Holy Spirit who are working fruit into our lives. But what Jesus says here is that the father is actively involved. Watching, tending, shaping, and pruning. Which is why Jesus says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he removes. And every branch that does not bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Family, this is telling us in the simplest terms that there are two kinds of branches in this world. Fruitless branches, which the father will remove, and fruitful branches, which the father will prune. And just to be clear, when Jesus says removing, he’s referring to rejection. But pruning, though it hurts, though it sometimes feels like God is cutting away, though it feels like rejection, it’s not. Pruning, family, is not punishment. Pruning is not a sign that something is wrong with you

or with your Christian life. Pruning is what happens to living branches. No gardener wastes his time pruning dead branches because dead branches don’t produce fruit. Only living ones do. The very reason living branches are pruned is so that they can produce more fruit, which means they’re already producing a kind of fruit. Pruning makes better fruit, lasting fruit. And so if you’re in Christ and you’re experiencing pressure or pain or suffering or loss, meaning you feel like you’re being pruned by God or he’s cutting away so that you feel like you have less than you had before he started pruning, that does not always mean that God is stepping away from you. It may mean God is caring more deeply for you than you actually realize. He might be cutting away and taking away so that you could produce more. And this is good because God is not committed

to your comfort, family. He is committed to your fruitfulness. And though the pruning is painful, it’s what produces good fruit. And listen, I know that’s hard to hear, especially if you’re sitting in the seat of suffering, but the scripture is clear. This is often how God matures his people through the providence of pain. So think of pruning as less of a knife that cuts to harm you and more like a scalpel that slices to heal and help produce more fruit. And just so we don’t confuse the pruning of God with the punishment of God for not performing well enough, notice what Jesus says next. Before he tells his disciples what to do, he reminds them of who they already are. So Jesus doesn’t just speak about identity, he speaks of our identity. He says in verse three, already you are clean because of the word

that I have spoken to you. This is massive. Jesus reveals his identity as the true vine and then reminds us of our identity in him. Notice Jesus does not say clean yourselves or perform or produce fruit and then I will work for you. He says you’re already clean because of my word. In other words, you already belong to me. You don’t have to clean yourself up. I have claimed you. I have made you mine. I’ve made you clean and presentable and I have attached you to myself by my word so that your life not only reflects who you belong to, but that your life begins to grow in the way that I desire it to. Heather and I learned pretty quickly as parents that our boys didn’t become our children once they learned how our family works. They didn’t earn their last name, right boys?

Yeah. They didn’t have to pass the test to be our kids. They didn’t prove they understood our house rules to belong. No, they were our sons before they understood their bedtime routines, before they knew what we expected of them, before they could even explain what it meant to belong to our family. From the very beginning, they belong. Now over time, we taught them how to live as children. We still teach them how to speak kindly, how to tell the truth, how to clean up after themselves.

Yeah, you guys are doing all right. We teach them how to love one another, how to follow Jesus, but none of that instruction makes them our sons. It flows from the fact that they already are. So if they disobey, we don’t sit them down and say, well, you’re no longer part of the family. No, we correct them with our words because they belong to us. And that’s exactly what Jesus is saying here. You are already clean because of my word. He doesn’t say once you learn to abide or remain, then you belong. He says you belong, now remain. You see, family, identity comes before family instruction. Grace comes before growth. And fruit works the same way. Fruit does not make you a branch. Being a branch is what makes fruit possible. That’s why the Christian life is not about earning a place in the family.

It’s about learning how to live as someone who already belongs to the family. And once Jesus anchors us in our true identity, then he gives the command that carries the entire passage. Verse four, he says, abide in me and I in you. And do you hear that movement? Abide, remain, stay. Not achieve, impress, or hustle, just remain. And Jesus explains why this matters so much in the second half of verse four. He says, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. In other words, branches don’t produce fruit by pure effort. Branches don’t grit their teeth to grow. They don’t self-motivate into bigger branches. They produce fruit simply by being connected. In other words, production of spiritual fruit is inseparably tied to union with the vine. So what that means very practically

is being connected to the vine is the only way to live. And to be connected to the vine means being connected relationally to Jesus. And just in case we mistake how necessary it is to be connected to produce fruit, Jesus double downs in verse five. He says, for apart from me, you can do nothing. And that might be one of the most humbling statements in all of scripture. Ed said this morning, Jesus doesn’t say apart from me, you won’t be able to do that much. He doesn’t say apart from me, you can only accomplish a few things that are in the realm of your skillset. No, he says apart from me, you can do nothing. Which means you could be busy apart from Christ. You could be productive apart from Christ. You can even be religious apart from Christ. But you cannot bear fruit that glorifies God apart from him.

When Jesus says you can do nothing, that’s exactly what he means. You can do nothing that amounts to bringing God glory. Which family bringing God glory is what we were made for. And Jesus says this, he follows up with one of the hardest and most honest truths about what happens when branches get disconnected from the vine. Look at what he says in verse six. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. There’s Jesus saying here that those who are disconnected dry up. They wither, they become lifeless. And it’s not just that the lifeless branches cease to live, it’s that they’re thrown into the fire and burned. And if we’re honest when Jesus says that, it makes many of us uncomfortable. Because though he’s using the image

of disconnected branches, Jesus is speaking literally about judgment. And not just removal, he’s talking about hell. And if Jesus is clear about the reality of hell, then family, so should we. Listen, the reason this matters is because we live in a culture that deeply resists this language. Even within the church, there is a tendency to soften the reality of hell. Because for whatever reason, they think it might be bad for Jesus’s brand. We’re comfortable talking about grace. We’re good talking about love. We love talking about heaven. But when it comes to hell, there’s a quiet pressure to explain it away. To treat it like it’s a metaphor, to reduce it to life without meaning. Or to assume that a loving Jesus would never actually mean what he says here. But here’s the problem. Jesus doesn’t treat hell as a metaphor. And he doesn’t apologize for the warning.

In fact, Jesus speaks about hell more than he speaks about heaven. Did you know that? Not because he’s cruel, but because he’s honest. And because he loves to tell the truth, even when the truth is hard to hear. Jesus is saying something very clear in this passage. Abiding in the vine is relationship with him. And relationship with Jesus is not just about fruit. It’s about safety. Life flows from him. To abide in him is to live. And to be disconnected from him is not harmless. It’s not temporary, and it’s not safe. Jesus is saying, apart from me, you wither. You are removed. You are gathered, and you are burned. Which means hell is not merely the absence of life. It is the presence of judgment. Real separation from God under his righteous judgment. And no one in the gospels speaks more clearly about that reality than Jesus himself.

And here’s what makes this even more sobering. Jesus is not speaking these words to pagans on the street. He’s speaking to his disciples in the shadows of the cross. Because one of the men standing there, listening to everything Jesus is saying, is Judas. Judas walked with Jesus. Judas heard the teaching. Judas saw the miracles. But Judas did not abide. He looked like a branch, but he was never drawing life from the vine. And that’s why this warning is here. Jesus is not describing a believer who loses his salvation. He’s exposing the danger of proximity without union. Do you understand that? He’s exposing the danger of participation without dependence. Of appearance without life. Judas didn’t fall away suddenly. He was always detached. He withered quietly until what was hidden became visible. Family, Jesus includes this warning not to terrify true believers, but to awaken false security.

To show us that religious closeness is not the same as saving union. That pretending to abide is not the same as actually abiding. And that apart from Christ, there is no neutral outcome. There is either life or there is judgment. And the reason Jesus speaks so plainly about hell is not because he wants to scare people away from God, but because he’s about to go to the cross to rescue people from hell. He himself will be cut off like a dead branch. He himself will bear the judgment we deserve for our fruitless lives. He will endure the fire of God’s wrath so that branches who deserve to be removed might instead be grafted in by the grace of God. Jesus stepped into judgment in our place and intervened on our behalf, which means the warning in this passage is also an invitation. An invitation to stop pretending.

An invitation to stop relying on proximity. To stop trusting in false vines, but to actually abide in the true vine. To come to Christ, to have relationship with him, to receive life and to remain in him. Because outside of him, there is no safety. But in him, there is life, real life. And that life lasts eternally. But listen, Jesus doesn’t just leave us with judgment in hell. He ends this section with clarity and with purpose. He says in verse eight, by this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. And notice what Jesus is doing here. After the warning, he doesn’t say, try harder or you get hell. He doesn’t say, prove yourself or else you get hell. He doesn’t say, earn your safety. Instead, he brings us back to fruit.

Not as a threat, but as evidence, because fruit is not how we avoid judgment. Fruit is how life reveals itself. In other words, if you are attached to Jesus, you will bear fruit. Now, the degree may vary, but be there and through that fruit that is being produced in your life, God is glorified. So to be clear, God is not glorified when we perform for him. He is glorified when his life flows through us, which means the warning about removal is not meant to drive us into fear. It’s meant to draw empty hands and fruitless hearts back to the vine. So family, let me ask you this morning, are there areas in your life where you’re trying to produce fruit apart from the vine? Where you’re relying on discipline without dependence or spiritual effort without union, activity without attachment? If that’s you, hear this clearly.

Love Is Where Life Lives

Life, real spiritual life does not come from trying harder. It comes from staying connected to Jesus. So be at rest, dear brother or sister. Stop striving in your own strength. Instead, spend time with Jesus. Enjoy him, speak with him, pray to him, listen to his word, walk with his people, not out of duty, but out of delight. Brothers and sisters, cling to Jesus as if your life depended on it because it does. Life only flows from the vine and every other effort will only produce exhaustion. So rest, dear Christian. This brings us to our next section. Love is where life lives. We see this in verses nine through 11. So if the first section answered the question where life comes from, this section answers a different question. What does life in the vine actually feel like? Up to this point, Jesus has been speaking in categories of source and connection.

Vine, branches, fruit, and all of that is true, but because those are images, they can feel a bit abstract. So when Jesus says, abide in me, you might be prone to think, what does that actually look like? What does it mean for my heart, not just for my theology? And Jesus doesn’t leave them with a vague command. He presses it down into something deeply personal. He says, abide in my love, and that changes everything. Look at verse nine. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. Again, notice Jesus does not say, as I love you, try to love me back. He says, as the Father has loved me with that same kind of love, I have poured out to you. The same love that has eternally existed between the Father and the Son has now been extended to the disciples

and to the followers of Jesus. Not a diluted version of love, not a lesser love than that, but the very love that is shared between the Father and the Son, which means abiding in Christ is not about doing, it’s about remaining in the love that he has given to us. In fact, that word abide means to remain. It means to settle down, to take up your residence in the love of God, to return to the love of God. When everything else feels unstable in your life, the love of God is where your heart belongs. So abiding in Christ in verses one and eight, that’s primarily about source, where life and fruit come from, but abiding in his love in verses nine and 11 is about experience, what shapes your desires, what anchors your joy, what your heart is resting in, because Jesus is not only concerned with what you do,

he is deeply concerned with what you love. And the reason why is because what you love will always shape how you live. What you love will shape how you live. And Jesus knows the question that most of us are thinking, well, then how do I do all that? How do I actually abide in his love? How do I rest in his love? How do I find my home in his love? Well, verse 10 answers that question. 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. Notice Jesus connects the experience of love to obedience,

but notice the order. He does not say, obey me so that I will love you. He says, I have loved you, now live inside that love through ongoing obedience. And that distinction matters. Obedience does not create our relationship with God. Obedience sustains the experience of that relationship and disobedience does not make God stop loving his children, but it does pull our hearts away from enjoying that love. We step out of its warmth. We trade nearness for distance when we disobey, peace for anxiety, joy for restlessness, and Jesus in his kindness is showing us how not to do that. Family obedience does not earn love, but obedience keeps us close to the one who loves us. That’s why Jesus points to his own life when he says, just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love, Jesus did not obey the father to become the son.

He obeyed because he was the son and his obedience did not diminish his joy. It was the pathway to it. Hebrews 12, two, we heard about this morning, that it was for the joy set before him that Jesus endured the cross, that he obeyed, which means obedience in the Christian life is not about white knuckling or rule keeping. It’s about relational trust, believing that his ways are good and that his ways lead to joy because at the heart of most of our sin is not simply rebellion, it’s distrust. Did you hear that? At the heart of most of our sin is not simply rebellion, it’s distrust. We don’t disobey because we hate God, we disobey because in the moment we’re not convinced that he’s good or that his commands are good for us. Sin rarely expresses this loud declaration, I reject God. It’s usually a quiet suspicion that says,

I’m not sure I can trust him here with this particular thing in my life, which means sin is not just breaking rules, it’s breaking trust. It’s believing even briefly that God is withholding something good, that his commands flow from control, not love, that obedience will kill joy, not protect it. That’s why Jesus frames obedience inside the language of love. He doesn’t say obey me so that you don’t get punished, he says obey so that you can remain in my love. You see, obedience is not about compliance, it’s about confidence, a confident trust that God’s commands flow from his love, not his control, that what he asks of us is not meant to kill joy, but to guard it, to keep us close, to keep us satisfied in him and to keep us alive. That’s why Jesus says in verse 11, these things I have spoken to you

that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Jesus is not in the business of forming anxious servants, he’s in the business of cultivating joyful disciples, joy-filled disciples, not shallow joy, not circumstantial joy, but his joy placed deep within us, which means joy is not something we chase after obedience, joy is something that grows within obedience when love is the soil. So family, let me ask you this morning, where are you resisting obedience because you are unsure of God’s love and goodness and kindness for you?

Fruit Makes Love Grow

Where are you holding back because you don’t know whether what God has for you is a good thing? Where are you holding back because you’re afraid of where obedience might lead you? Wherever you find yourself this morning, hear this clearly, Jesus is good. He is good and his commands are good for you. He’s not leading you away from joy, he is leading you directly into it. Obedience is both safety and satisfaction. Trust him, he’s trustworthy. And family, this leads to our third point, fruit makes love grow. We see this in verses 12 through 17. Here, Jesus shifts the focus a bit. Up to this point, he’s been speaking about our personal connection to him, remaining, trusting, obeying, living in his love, but now he turns us outward because abiding in the vine is never meant to end with us. It always moves towards others. Look at verse 12.

This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. That phrase, just as I have loved you, that tells us everything we need to know about love. Jesus doesn’t leave love vague or undefined, nor does he allow us to fill it with the culture’s ideas of sentiment, preference, or self-expression. Jesus defines love by his own life, and then he makes it unmistakably clear in verse 13. He says, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. This is not poetic exaggeration. Jesus is interpreting his own death before it happens. Within hours, he will literally lay his life down, not for strangers, not for the religious elite, but for his friends. And who are his friends? Well, verse 14 tells us. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. And once again, Jesus connects love and obedience.

He’s saying my love has already brought you near, and obedience is how that friendship is fleshed out. And this is important, especially in our cultural moment, because we tend to confuse friendship with familiarity, with followers, with shared interests, but friendship with Jesus is so much deeper than that. Friendship with Jesus means peace with God, nearness to him, and life under his loving authority, and Jesus clarifies this contrast in verse 15. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You see, servants obey because they’re told to obey. Friends are invited into the why, which means obedience is no longer blind submission. It is informed participation in the mission of God. And then Jesus grounds this entire friendship relationship

into something profoundly stabilizing. Verse 16, he says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide. Now, listen, when Jesus says this, he’s not aiming to spark a theological debate on Calvinism or Arminianism. He’s offering deep comfort here. And to see it, you have to remember the moment. He’s hours away from the cross. These men are about to scatter. One of them will deny him, all of them will run. And it’s in this moment when Jesus says, you didn’t choose me, I chose you. Not to confuse them, not to test them, but to anchor them, because he knows what’s coming. Their courage will fail. Their understanding will collapse in the face of fear. Their obedience will waver. And so what he does, like a good shepherd, is he grounds them, not in their grip on him,

but in his grip on them. And that statement does two things at the same time. It removes pride and removes insecurity. Family, we did not reason our way into the kingdom. We did not earn our friendship with God. Grace leaves no room for pride, and it leaves no room for fear. Because if my relationship rests on my choice, then it rises and falls with my consistency. But Jesus says, I chose you, which means our security rests not in the strength of our faith, not in the strength of our faithfulness or our fruitfulness, but on the strength of his faithfulness. You see, the doctrine of election is not meant to make us argue. It’s meant to make us rest. And notice, this is incredible. Jesus connects the doctrine of election, not to passivity, but to purpose. He says, I chose you that you should go and bear fruit,

fruit that lasts. So what this means is that election is not a theological couch to sit on. Like, you know, if they’re on the list, they’ll get the memo. I don’t really have to do anything. God’s gonna work it all out. No, that’s not what God is doing here. Election is a calling to walk in. Grace produces fruit that moves. Faith that endures. And Jesus makes clear that this fruit is not limited to our personal or private spirituality. You gotta go and bear fruit, which means our love must spill outward into relationships, into sacrifice, into the shared life of the church. You know, the thing about branches is that they don’t bear fruit alone.

Not any branches that I’ve seen. They bear fruit together, which means the Christian life was never designed for isolation. This is why being committed to a local church is so important, so that you’re not isolated. Abiding in Christ also means abiding with his people, who are the visible expression of his love in this watching world. And that’s exactly why Jesus ends this section in verse 17 by saying, these things I command you so that you will love one another.

He chose you so that you would go and produce fruit. He commands you so that you can love one another. Everything circles back to love. Abiding leads to love. Love is the pathway to fruit, and fruit glorifies the Father as it spills out into the lives of those who the Father loves. And so this should provoke a question for our church this morning. If someone were to walk into Trinity Church and stay long enough to see our life together, what kind of fruit would they taste? Why?

The fruit of activity? The fruit of busyness? Maybe the fruit of religious liturgy? Or would they taste the fruit of love? Because a church can be active and fruitless. Did you know that? A church can be busy but barren. It can even be theologically precise but loveless. But a church that remains in Christ, a church that loves Christ, will not be fruitless. Because that kind of love, the love that he’s calling us to, grows when we remain in the vine, and praise be to God, I think we are a church that remains in the vine. And my prayer for us is that we would remain, that we would stay, and that we might produce the fruit of love with other people. And that love would compel a watching world to want to be attached to the vine, who is the source of that love.

Family, when we step back and look at this passage as a whole, it’s clear, Jesus has not given us a complicated vision of the Christian life, but a very clear one. The Christian life is not about doing, or becoming impressive. It’s about staying connected to Jesus. It’s not about striving for life, it’s about receiving life. And it’s not about forcing fruit to appear, but about remaining where fruit naturally grows. For some of you, that feels like relief. Because you’re tired. Not tired of Jesus, but tired of trying to live for Jesus in your own strength. And if that’s you, don’t hear Jesus rebuking you this morning. Instead, hear him inviting you to rest in him. To find real rest by reattaching yourself to him this morning. For others, this passage feels like it’s exposing you. Because you’ve realized you’ve been active, but disconnected. Busy, but spiritually dry.

Faithful in front of people, but fruitless in private. If that’s you, listen, Jesus does not meet that realization with shame. He meets it with grace. He doesn’t say, do better. He says, come close. Jesus never treats fruit as the entry point. He treats fruit as the outcome. The question he leaves with us this morning is not how productive have you been,

but where are you drawing your life from? Because branches don’t die from a lack of effort. They die from disconnection. And the good news is that the vine is still full of life. The father is still tending the vineyard. The word is still cleansing his people. The spirit is still sustaining that connection and the invitation Jesus gives here has not expired. Jesus says, abide in me now. Not tomorrow. Not once you’ve fixed yourself. Not once you’ve proven yourself with fake fruit. Abide now. For some of you here this morning, this invitation is not primarily about abiding. It’s about coming. You see, you can’t abide in Jesus if you’ve not first come to him by faith. Because branches don’t drift into the vine. They have to be joined to it by Jesus. And if you’ve spent your life trying to build meaning, joy, identity, and everything else apart from Christ,

Jesus stands before you this morning with this invitation. He says, I am the true vine. Not a vine. Not one vine of many options. I am the only source of real life. And here is the heart of the gospel. He doesn’t ask you to climb your way up into the vine. He doesn’t ask you to earn your place. He doesn’t ask you to clean yourself up first. Jesus went to the cross. He was cut off to take the judgment and punishment we deserve because of our sin. So that dead branches, like you and me, could be grafted in and receive his life. That’s the gospel. Life for the lifeless. Grace for the undeserving. Forgiveness for the guilty. And union for the disconnected. And you can attach to him this morning by believing who he says he is. The true vine. The true source of life.

Come to the Vine

And the Lord of all. And if you have questions about that, you can ask any Christian in this room, and we’d love to talk to you, about attaching yourself to this precious Jesus. Ask him to save you, and he will attach you and give you life. So family, whether you need to come to him for the first time or return to him after a season of striving and distance, the invitation is the same. Come to the vine. Abide in him and receive life. A life that produces joy. Amen? Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your goodness. For the thousands of ways we have not trusted your goodness and messed things up by pursuing our own pathway to joy, forgive us. Help us to see that the end of our obedience is satisfaction and safety. Thank you for rescuing us from ourselves.

For saving us. For cleansing us. For attaching us to yourself. And making us produce fruit. We pray, oh God, that you would continue to produce in us the life of Jesus so that we might spread that love to one another and to a world who so desperately needs Jesus. We pray these things in his powerful and mighty name. Amen.