is from John chapter 15 as we continue our series in John and John's gospel is different than all the rest of them in that nearly half of it not quite but close to half of it is the last week of Jesus life on earth starting in chapter at the end of chapter 12 and on after that is till 21 is the last week of Jesus life leading up to his crucifixion and then resurrection so we we get more of an in-depth view of some of his teaching with his disciples and John 15 is no different so give your attention to God's Word I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser every branch of mind 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 the word 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 and thrown into the fire and burned 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 proved to be my disciples as the father has loved me so I have 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 your joy may be made full father in heaven as we come to consider your word open our eyes and our hearts and our minds and allow us to be changed by your spirit in Jesus name amen now Jesus begins by saying I am the true vine and he emphasizes that I am the true vine this seems to imply fairly directly that there is another vine a false vine or at least a defective vine and we can see that in a couple of places in the Old Testament that bear with me as I read Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5 Psalm 80 beginning in verse 7 says restore us Oh God Almighty make your face shine upon us that we may be saved you brought a vine out of Egypt you drove out the nations and planted it you cleared the ground for it and took root and fill the land the mountains were covered with its shade the mighty cedar with its branches I sent out its bowels to the sea it shoots as far as the river the river to the sea that's familiar sounding isn't it why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes bores from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it return to us Oh God Almighty look down from the heavens and see watch over this vine the root of your right hand has planted the Sun you have raised up for yourself the vine is cut down and is burned with fire and your rebuke your people perish that your rebuke your people perish let your hand rest on the man at your right hand the Son of Man you have raised up for yourself then we will not turn away from you revive us and we will call on your name restore us Oh Lord God Almighty make your face shine upon us that we may be saved if you're paying attention you can see that this passage this Psalm is full of references to the vine and to the Sun the vine is supposed to be Israel and the Son of Man is obviously Jesus Isaiah 5 says the vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel the men of Judah in the garden of his delight and he looked for justice but saw bloodshed and he looked for righteousness but heard cries of distress so Jesus you see is claiming to be rather than the nation of Israel the vine from which will grow the vineyard of the Lord Jesus does two things here that he does repeatedly in the Gospels he uses agricultural metaphors to describe himself in God's people now if Jesus had come in our time assuming things would be similar to how they are now he might use a computer programming metaphor but Israel was an agricultural nation and he uses a metaphor is that they would understand for instance he talks about a fig tree a man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it and found none and he said to the vine dresser look for three years now I've come seeking fruit from this fruit tree and I find none cut it down why should it use up the ground and he answered him sir let it alone this year until I dig around it and put on manure then if it should not bear fruit next year well and good but if not you can cut it down and the parable of the sower where Jesus talks about the sower went out and sowed seed some fell on the road and birds came and ate it up someone rocky ground and it sprang up but because of the shallowness of its root it's it died and others fell on thorns and thorns came up and choked it out and others fell on good soil and yielded a crop some hundred some sixty some thirty he who has ears let him hear and finally a grain of wheat truly I say to you unless a green wheat falls to the earth and dies it remains alone but if it died I'm sorry if it falls into the earth and dies it remains alone but if it dies it bears much fruit so as we can see Jesus repeatedly talks about bearing fruit he expects us as believers as those who are his to bear fruit for his glory if the church is alive and growing and God is the gardener or the vine keeper then the church should bear fruit the second thing is Jesus claims to be the true version of something that Israel represented however poorly we can see that manna in John chapter 6 was viewed by the Jews as coming from Moses but Jesus tells him that he's the manna Israel was supposed to be the shepherd of the people the Pharisees were supposed to shepherd the people but he says he is the true shepherd and again Israel is supposed to be the vine and he says he is the true vine verse to every branch in me that bears no fruit while every while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful you are already clean because the word I've spoken to you every branch that bears fruit he prunes I grew up in the state of Michigan which is as close to being Canadian as any American state we're surrounded by Canada almost from the Upper Peninsula in Ontario all the way around down to Detroit Detroit is actually I think the only city where if you want to get to Canada you have to go south over the bridge or through the tunnel from Detroit to Windsor which is why we got CBC when I was growing up and we were able to watch Hockey Night in Canada and felt very I even watched the great cup I remember watching the great cup and telling my dad how excited I was about who won the great cup and he just didn't care he didn't grow up in Detroit he grew up in Tennessee so but one of the things that we did as people who live in Michigan do almost every fall is we went to apple orchards and I mean I went there as a kid we would get apples we were allowed to pick apples we would have apple cider we'd have donuts which was the best part it was just a very festive time to go into the apple orchard and and the only problem was the yellow jackets they want they like the apples and the cider and the donuts as much as we did and they were all they were very brave too if you'd starting to eat a donut they would come and land right on it you had to be careful but when I got a little older and we would still we would go to apple orchards we did the same in Ohio they weren't as good we went to apple orchards with the kids and that's when I started noticing something about the trees they were full of apples they were full of big juicy ripe apples that you could pick but they didn't look like the apple trees that I had seen in the wild apple trees in the wild are beautiful they have big bows and you can sit under the shade of them and in the springtime the flowers are beautiful and fragrant but these trees had short stubby little branches so I didn't notice it when I was a kid but I noticed it as an adult and so I remember asking one of the orchard keepers I said what why are all these trees so ugly and he said well the sap in the tree produces branches leaves and fruit so we cut off the branches so that more of the sap will produce fruit apples rather than branches and leaves if you've ever gone into the woods or seen a wild apple tree and picked an apple and took a bite of it you're probably going to be disappointed because they're small and naughty and they're just not as juicy and well tended and they produce much better fruit when the branches are pruned the closer the branches to the trunk the more fruitful the branch the further away the less fruitful and that's what Jesus is saying here he says that he is the vine we're the branches and he prunes us so that we will bear fruit and we'll bear more fruit if he prunes us he says also that we're attached to Christ we'll get back to the pruning in a minute we're attached to Christ he says abide in me now abide is an interesting word if you think about what does abode mean abode means a dwelling place it means a house or a tent or a tabernacle it means a place where you live so when Jesus says abide in me he's saying make your abode in me live in me dwell in me is fat in fact uh in colossus chapter three verse 16 it says that we are to let the word of God dwell in us richly now what I'm afraid of for a lot of Christians a lot of people who name the name of Christ is that we are visiting Jesus and we're not abiding in him let me see if I can explain my son Sam moved to Tucson as many of you know and my daughter who's a realtor put out a notice in her neighborhood looking for a place for him to stay and the neighbors directly across the street had a I guess you would call it a a mother-in-law residence you know close enough to the house but not in the house and it was right across the street and so they rented it to Sam and now Sam lives there he abides there and he can go across the street and visit his sister almost any time he wants to and uh my my daughter's little boy Julian loves uncle Sam just lights up whenever he's around now Sam doesn't abide with Jessica he visits he visits her he doesn't live with her and what I'm concerned about is I think for a lot of us that's how our relationship with Jesus is we're visitors we visit with him when we want to when we need a a pick me up when we're in trouble when we think something isn't going well we visit Jesus in prayer or we might read the Bible or we come to church but not that often you know every once in a while we're visitors we don't abide we don't dwell we don't live in Jesus and Jesus says if you don't abide in me you won't bear fruit and if you don't bear fruit you'll be cut off and thrown into the fire which means that if you're not abiding it seems to me he's saying you don't believe that you're not really a Christian if you're only visiting you're not a Christian to be a Christian means that you abide in Jesus and he also says that he abides in you and this is the other part of it that is interesting I think a lot of us have Jesus in our life want Jesus in our life in our house let's say and in our house there are several rooms but I think a lot of us many of us have rooms in the house that we don't want Jesus to go in we have rooms in our house that excuse me excuse me thank you we have rooms in our house that we just as soon keep locked and not let Jesus enter could be the TV room we don't want Jesus in there could be any other room in the house where we are doing things or thinking things or being things or seeing things that we know that Jesus would not be pleased with but we like him so Jesus can have the run of the house except for this room or that room you see then Jesus isn't really abiding with us because for him to abide with us means that he has the run of the house see for Jesus to abide with us and us abide with him means that we should be united with him I'm going to read a passage from Ephesians 1 it's very familiar blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him in love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will to the praise of his glory with which he blessed us in the beloved in him we have redemption through the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace down to verse 11 in him we have an obtained in inheritance verse 13 in him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise who's a guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory so you see these are all descriptions of what it means to be united with Christ what it means to have union with Christ and when we do have union with Christ and the Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside of us and when he dwells in us he has free reign over us says we're sealed in him by the promised Holy Spirit who's a guarantee of our inheritance and we've talked about this before but what guarantee means is he's the pledge of our inheritance the earnest of our inheritance as I think the King James puts it and if you've ever bought a house you have to put down earnest money they call it let's say you're buying a house that now this is a fantasy here let's say you're buying a house for a hundred thousand dollars and you have to put down ten percent that's ten thousand dollars is earnest money that's to show that you're serious about obtaining the house and if you back out you lose your earnest money so when God says the Holy Spirit has dwelt in you and is your earnest or your guarantee that means that once he's in you he's not going to back out because if he does then he loses his earnest which is the Holy Spirit and that's not going to happen so to abide in Christ means that we are abiding in him not visiting we're not across the street where we can come and see him once in a while we are living in him and he is living in us dwelling in us richly now he talks about pruning pruning in our lives and pruning is painful I don't think that plants usually express feelings that we're aware of although some botanists say that they do they have emotions and they can express feelings the the point is that pruning hurts it hurts us so what is pruning it can be several different things a friend told me how she had strayed away from God and stopped attending church then she was injured in a car accident with seemingly permanent consequences that made it difficult for her to do some of the things she loved then she experienced conflict with her siblings when her parents became ill the same time her husband was traveling a lot for work she felt lonely and depressed God was pruning her she went back to church started attending bible study listening to sermons online some from our church and that's why I know this story now she's serving in her church and it's bearing fruit but without the pruning without the troubles without the difficulties that she encountered this would not have happened God sometimes uses circumstances to take away things that may seem harmless but are preventing us from bearing fruit for his glory sometimes disease befalls us sometimes it's conflict either with family members or at work or with neighbors sometimes you lose a job sometimes you're disappointed with how things are going or have gone relational things they feel awful when they happen but they're used by God to make you a more fruitful branch so as an example when I had become a Christian at Eastern Michigan University I had been dating a woman for two years and we had talked on and off about possibly getting married and I tried to convince her to become a Christian and she just didn't I remember walking across campus and there was another person from campus crusade that was standing just outside her dormitory and she asked me how I was doing and I told her I said well I've got this girlfriend and she's not a Christian and I don't know what to do about that she said yes you do you know what to do so we broke up a couple years later I married that girl that told me that I don't think she had an ulterior motive but it worked out pretty well so sometimes pruning even though it hurts causes us to grow closer to Christ ends up being for our benefit we don't necessarily understand it at the time for example Job had a lot of pruning if you've ever read the book of Job he'd see he lost everything and there was never an explanation given to Job for why he lost everything we got the explanation but Job didn't and sometimes there is no explanation that we see on this side of heaven hopefully we'll get an explanation on the other side but maybe we won't and I have a feeling that if that if we don't get an explanation once we're in hell we won't care we're in heaven how good how much better could it be well it can so sometimes pruning is understandable sometimes it's discipline sometimes it's just terrible things that happen to us things that we don't like things that we don't understand but how do you respond to the pruning Jesus says I'm 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 you can't effort fruit you abide in Christ you let the word of Christ dwell in you richly you you abide in Christ Christ abides in you and then you will be fruitful so if you're not fruitful you have to ask yourself what is the issue why aren't I bearing fruit why aren't people coming to Christ because of me the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control against these things there is no law those who belong to Christ have crucified the sinful nature with his passions and desires since we live by the spirit let us keep in step with the spirit let us not become conceited provoking and in being each other to bear fruit the kind of fruit that Jesus is talking about the crops that he's talking about is other believers it's it's it's personal fruit like I just read about but it's it's other believers it's seeing people deliver from the dominion of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved son Jesus says if you don't abide in me anyone who does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch that and withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burnt this is a serious serious word from Jesus if you're not abiding in him if he's not abiding in you it's because you don't know him it's because you're a branch that's withering and I know that's hard to hear but sometimes we need to hear these things in order for us to say do a check of our own heart and decide are we abiding in Christ is he abiding in us are we in danger of withering in second Corinthians it says according to the grace of God which was given to me Paul's talking like a wise master builder I laid a foundation and none other is building on it but each man must be careful how he builds on it for no one can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid which is Jesus Christ now if any man builds on the foundation with gold silver precious stones wood hair straw each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work if any man's work which he built on it remains he will receive a reward if any man's work is burned up he will suffer loss but he himself will be saved yet as though through fire Jesus talks about wheat and tares he talks about outer darkness he talks about unquenchable fire if you're not bearing fruit if you aren't bearing fruit for God's glory you have to ask yourself am I abiding in Christ is Christ abiding in me and if the answer is I'm not sure then then what we're supposed to do is repent and return to Christ and cling to him and if the answer is no same thing repent and cling to him because by this is my father glorify that you bear much fruit and so prove to me my disciples these things I have spoken to you he says that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full that your joy may be full you see that's it if if we're not abiding in Christ no matter no matter how much joy we think we have no matter how happy we think it makes us it's not the full joy that we get from living in him and him living in us taste and see that the Lord is good let's pray our father as we prepare to come to the table we ask that you would meet us there that we would desire to love you to abide in you to allow you to richly dwell within us every room in our house so that we'll be clean in Jesus name we pray in Jesus name we pray Amen