John 15.8
December 21st 2014
Milk
Welcome.
In terms of being socially responsible we have an announcement to make – there are four more days until Christmas.
Anyway . . . let’s pray, hear the word of God set to music, sit for a moment in silent reflection, and then come back and enter into our study of John chapter 15.
Pray
Music
Silence
The content of the next eight verses – John 15:1-8 is compact, rich, and just full of significant instructions.
For me it’s one of my personal favorites in the Bible.
Strange as this may sound I think it is really important to teach these passages contextually and honestly.
I say honestly because in light of popular Christian thought it would be very easy to rationalize these passages away and suggest they are saying something that they are not . . . or that they are not saying something that they are.
Contextually we have to try and decide where this teaching came from.
The reason I say this is because it seems to come out of nowhere.
In chapter 14 John ends the chapter with Jesus telling the eleven disciples that Satan is on his way and from that point forward He wouldn’t be speaking much with them any more.
That chapter ends with John having Jesus say:
“Arise, let us go hence,” meaning let’s go and face what is waiting (which is the Father’s will).
The problem is that chapter 15 simple starts with Jesus directly teaching them.
It is thought therefore than He taught them the contents of chapter 15, 16 and 17 as they journeyed toward Gethsemane.
Finally, relative to context, this teaching flows perfectly from things Jesus has been saying to them about love since all the way back in chapter 13.
And remember from last week that on several occasions the Lord ties the topic of love directly into the Holy Spirit coming and being present with them.
Remember what He said?
(S-L-O-W!)
John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
John 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
and
John 14:23 Jesus said, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Then finally, in the last verse of chapter 14 the Lord said:
John 14:31 But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.
Then right after building a major case for those who truly love Jesus to love each other, He goes right into this eight verse teaching about Him being the vine and believers being the branches.
As I said, each verse is a jewel of insight into the mind, will and masterful teaching style of the King.
In (verse 1) Jesus says:
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.
Alright let’s go back to verse one.
Before we read through the passages and glean their meaning I think it is vital for us to recall several VERY significant and irrefutable facts about the biblical message of Christianity.
First, in God’s eyes we are nothing without the Son. Our works standing alone are laughable – actually are filthy – in God’s eyes without the guiding influence of His Son.
Isaiah’s 64:6 says it best. (Listen)
“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
Loving us God sent His only Begotten Son to save us from our sin and it is by and through Him and Him alone, possessing the mind of Christ, that we as individuals before God, have ANY ability to do anything acceptable before Him.
This concept is difficult for unregenerated human beings. They have somehow convinced themselves that their works and efforts – their kindnesses, charities, “devotions to family and community” will impress God without Him.
Not so.
So that is the primary premise – without Jesus our lives of goodness before God are as filthy rags.
The second point set in biblical concrete is once a person receives the saving grace extended to all humans they are in Christ and Christ is in them.
As much as a branch is tied directly into a vine believers are direct living extensions of Jesus. This is not theoretical. It is literal spiritually.
Prior to knowing Him by grace through faith we were sons and daughters of the flesh, carnal, earthly, and not able to understand the things of the spirit.
We were all roaming tumble weeds, having no connection to Him and things on high but only capable of being blown by earth winds, collecting debris along the way.
On receiving Him we die to our former selves, crucified as it were to the things of this world, and begin to live and grow – extend OUT of Jesus, the ground, the source (in this case) the vine of light, life and love.
Romans 6:11 says to believers:
“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
2nd Corinthians 5:15 says it this way:
“And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”
1st Peter 4:2, speaking of the believer born again, says:
“he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”
And of course there is the immortal Galatians 2:20 which says:
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Are you with me? Two concrete facts taken directly from the Bible –
First, we can offer God nothing of value without Jesus, and two, once we have received God’s gift of salvation we die to the former self and live in and through Him.
The third biblical fact is presented to us here in the first eight verses of chapter 15 – it’s that those who have received Christ as their mediator to the Father and abide in Him as their source of living (out of love for Him) will (ready??) will produce fruit.
It’s NOT that they must produce fruit . . . get this right . . . it’s that they WILL. In fact the production of this fruit signals to a person that they are His!
(more on this in a minute)
The final provable biblical fact that cannot be altered or ignored is that the fruit the genuine believer CANNOT help but produce (because they are living in and through Him) is love.
Which comes by Him.
Which comes through Him.
Which will flow out of those who are tapped into Him, and
Which is not quantifiable, measured, demanded by men, or institutionalized but a DIRECT product of having Jesus course through our spirit veins and our submitting or allowing Him to rule and reign over us.
So let’s go back to verse one, where Jesus says:
1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
In opposition to the idea that Jesus and the eleven were now walking toward Gethsemane (or that they had arrived to the perimeter and stood there talking – potentially over real vines or vineyards) some believe that the group has not yet left the upper room and amidst their drinking of the last cup of the Passover meal (or wine) that Jesus took this occasion from that to say that He “was the true vine.”
Again, to us the comparison seems quite novel but to a Jews living in an area where vineyards abounded the teaching was not utterly unique.
Ezekiel said hundreds of years earlier:
“Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.”
I personally think that regardless of whether the apostles were still in the upper room drinking wine, or traveling toward Gethsemane and observing vineyards, or possibly even standing outside the temple gate where it was adorned with golden vines, when Jesus said,
“I am the true vine,” he was utilizing well known imagery to teach these men FIRST, that He was the true vine and nothing else could compare, and SECOND to illustrate the importance of bearing fruit and the process by which this fruit production took place.
We can’t help but note that Jesus calls Himself not just the vine but the “true vine.”
Throughout the Old Testament God likens the house of Israel to a vine and/or a vineyard that consistently fails to be true.
Isaiah 5:1 says:
“Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
2 And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it, and also made a winepress therein: and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
3 And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard.
4 What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?
5 And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:
In Psalms 80:8-10 we read:
“Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars.”
Jeremiah 2:21 says:
“Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?”
To me when Jesus says he was the true vine, I think He was telling them that all vines prior failed.
He is the genuine article in more ways that time will allow to suggest.
But particular to the illustration He is quite literally the trust vine as He alone shed His blood – the wine of the vine – for the world.
Toward these disciples specifically, a grape vine produces and yields proper juice and nourishment to all the branches, whether these are large or small or those little curly green spirally things.
EVERY bit of the nourishment of each branch and tendril passes through the main stalk, or the vine, which springs up out of the earth.
So was Jesus the source of all real strength and grace to these eleven disciples as their leader and teacher, and He is telling them that it is He who imparts to them all that they need.
So pulling from the religious history, from agriculture surrounding them, from the glorious symbolism of the golden vine attached to the façade of the temple, and possibly from the cup of wine they had partaken of together at the Passover meal, Jesus was bringing down the house with this comparative.
Studying it over the past few weeks I could sense all of this tremendously powerful elements pouring out of this teaching.
So after telling them that He was the “true vine” He tells them the role of His Father in this spiritual viticulture of men, saying:
“And my Father is the husbandman.”
This is an amazing revelation, my friends!
We have life and growth and connection only in and through Jesus the vine.
But what happens to us along the way is in the hands of His (and our) Father.
The word husbandman is not the best word and I think ought to be changed to “vine-dresser.”
The Father is the vinedresser or the one who has the care of a vineyard; whose office it is to nurture, trim, and defend the vine from infestations and attack, and who of course feels a deep interest in its growth and welfare.
In this illustration we have an order, don’t we?
The Father is the caretaker of the vine and as such has an ultimate end in mind. We would not think that a vine dresser was involved in vine dressing for the heck of it.
He or she waters, weeds, trims, cuts, prunes, digs and builds as a means to produce fruit.
Grapes!
Would a vine dresser do all that work to only produce vines and branches and leaves?
Never.
The end product justifies the means.
In fact, leaves – in scripture – are not always appreciated.
Going all the way back to Genesis after Adam and Eve had sinned against God we read:
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
This was man’s first attempt to hide from God behind beautiful things – in this case, fig leaves.
Really, it was the first Sunday’s best dress in scripture. All to hide their nakedness.
God is not the vinedresser over a vineyard that produces religious facades – He wants fruit, grapes, wine.
In Matthew 21:19 as Jesus was entering Jerusalem in the morning we read:
“And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.”
Another story that emblematically suggests that God wants fruit not the pretense of fruit (as represented by the leaves on the figless tree).
It is also interesting that in this discourse Jesus places Himself (as the vine) in the hands of the Husbandman or Vine dresser.
He is the vine, and we are the branches – both parts of the grape plant – but here He says His father is of a completely different species – a vine-dresser.
From this I would suggest that God appointed his Son to be the source of life and growth to man – that everything comes by and through our abiding in Him and Him alone, but that the Father has an all-together different role in our Christian lives.
What role does He play?
Caregiver of all the branches of this vine–of all who an extension of the Lord by faith.
To what end – to present a nice row of plants? Nope.
To cultivate a gorgeous vine covered in leaves alone? Not in the least.
His whole purpose is to bring about a harvest of love.
Being the master-teacher Jesus makes the Father’s role in how He approaches every branch (every one of us) perfectly clear, saying:
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Go with me through every word here. Jesus first says:
“Every branch in me.”
Note that these are extensions of growth out from Him the vine. They are in Him – simple as that. Confirmed followers who would not be in Him at all unless they had at some point come to believe on Him.
These are those who have actually believed on Him at some point in time in their lives.
“Every branch in me,” He purposefully says.
Now, the word for branch in the Greek is “Klema,” and it is used to describe the tiniest little tendril, green shoot, or thick brown branch.
Obviously, in the analogy, little shoots and tendrils (which represent babes in Christ) will not be fruit bearers would they?
I mean what kind of vine dresser would walk through a vineyard and snap off every little tendril or shoot because it was void of fruit?
None.
Neither would a God do this to babes in Christ) who are young and green and learning what it means to be in Christ, right?
So I think we can agree that when Jesus says EVERY branch He is rationally and reasonably speaking of every branch that has had time to grow and mature in Christ Jesus.
Moving on we discover, however, that if we are talking about mature Christians, there is really only two options for those of us who qualify: ready?
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he (1) taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he (2) purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
There is the reality, folks, of being a mature Christian –
“Get taken away” OR “get purged.”
Put yourself in the place of a vineyard owner. In fact, to bring the whole thing home, put yourself in the place of a vineyard owner whose sole ambition is to get everyone on earth drunk (in the case of men this would be “drunk with wine” and in the case of God it would be to get every single individual on earth drunk with the spirit of utter love). Okay?
And you have a vineyard that you need to produce fruits (or grapes or love) so that the product can be used to bless more and more people.
What would YOU do with the mature branches that bare no fruit and what would YOU do with the mature branches that produce? EXACTLY!
Any reasonable vineyard owner (especially one with the ambition to get everyone drunk on wine – or drunk with the Spirit which is manifested in love) would not only remove the dead wood on a constant basis but would purge and prune all the productive vines to bring forth even fruit to accomplish His means, right?!
This is the case with the Father. He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to overcome and save the world by LOVE.
Those who follow and abide in and love His Son will overcome and help save the world by and through the same – love – in this case, the fruit of love.
For those who are “in Him as branches” who do not bear fruit we have to ask, “why?”
In stead of me suggesting why believers fail to produce fruit Jesus again, gives us the answer in another bearing fruit parable – (the parable of the sower) – telling us that those who are in Him (in the vine) that bear no fruit (of love) are like seeds that are cast on either “stony ground” and “thorny ground” and as a result are not able to produce fruits of love.
What do these grounds represent?
Those who are growing up and out of the stony ground are those who, Jesus says,
“when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; but have no root in themselves and so endure only for a time but afterward, because of affliction or persecution due to the Word, are immediately offended.”
So there is the first reason why some who are branches in the vine do not produce fruit – “affliction or persecution from the Word.”
The Greek word for “affliction” is THLIP-SIS and means pressure – possibly from the world, or family, or their own will – they feel pressure to conform to such instead of the Word and what it says.
The other Greek word translated persecution (DEE-OGAY-MOUS) means exactly this – persecution.
Instead of just pressure there is outright persecution for the Word’s sake . . . and they cannot produce anything but leaves of religion.
In another reason for failure to produce fruit Jesus says:
“these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word (are his, branches to some extent in the vine) but “the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.”
Generally speaking I think we could LIFE gets in the way for these branches, in one way or another.
It happens so very easily. We get consumed with the cares of this life – poverty or riches or the lusts of other things – that we lose the priority of loving others as Christ loved them all.
So that’s the first warning Jesus gives.
Admittedly, many teachers of scripture suggest that those who are Christ’s will always bear fruit and those in this parable have never really been His.
It’s a very sticky wicket because those who ARE His Will certainly produce fruit as they abide in Him. So what they say is true.
The problem, however, with this “true statement,” is that it implies that all who do NOT produce fruit were NEVER His.
And while I would LIKE to teach this because it is really clean and easy, these passages – both the parable of the Sower and the discourse on the Vine and Branches both suggest that the seeds and the branches are in Him, have received the Word, have grown out of Him as the vine, but cannot remain in Him due to these external forces to which they succumb.
So there is the first act the Father does – takes non-fruit bearing branches away.
The alternative to this is to bear fruits of love as emissaries of Christ to the world.
Unfortunately this decision – and I do believe it is always a decision on our part – but unfortunately Jesus reveals how the Father responds to those who actually bear fruit – He “purgeth it,” the King James says.
The word means to prune and or to
“cleanse,” (in this case through pruning) as a means to clear the way for more fruit to come forth.
There is a parallel in the Jesus parable of the Sower and the teaching here that the Father “prunes, purges, or cleans” those who love as a means to make room for even a greater yield of love.
In the parable of the Sower the Lord uses stones in the soil and thorny plants as inhibitors to the plants growth and ability to yield fruit.
Gardeners and farmers know that as a means to produce the best plants and therefore the best fruit the soil must be cleared of all obstacles – like thorny weeds or rocks.
When a farmer does this he is purging the land of obstacles that hinder growth and plant yields.
Same with a vinedresser or tree fruit grower.
Of course the parallel to believers in spiritual realms is that as we have received Christ, and are abiding in Him, allowing His spirit to do the work in and through us, we have need of God cutting away those things within our person that inhibit genuine love – and the capacity to genuinely allow Him to love through us more and more and more.
Want the heart to function properly – cut out the fat. Want the eyes to see clearly. Remove the cataracts. Same exact principle spiritually when it comes to bearing fruit.
Now stay with me because what I am about to share is vital to really comprehending this message in my opinion.
We have a natural tendency to misinterpret this teaching that Jesus shares in verse 2 and think that the primary application to the Father purging or cleaning us (as branches) is external or relates to external factors like sins, and attitudes, and proclivities.
In the end these external factors ARE altered by God’s pruning, but in the business of cleaning and pruning by God all things are spiritually pruned FIRST with the flesh falling in thereafter – and NEVER perfectly.
In other words the pruning and the clearing away of obstacles to growth and love-yield all occurs in the heart.
Again, it’s very natural for us (as human beings housed in flesh) to honestly and actually and literally believe that cleaning up our act is God pruning us, in donning a nicer suit or dress of leaves, or scrubbing the exterior is compliant to God’s pruning hand but this is not so and actually such approaches actually serve to work AGAINST what God is trying to do on our hearts.
Speaking to the Pharisees who were under such an impression Jesus said in Matthew 23:27:
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
God works on the things of the Spirit, by the Spirit, on the heart and soul of Man which pruning and cleansing is often never seen physically as it typically amounts to brokenness, humility, self-effacement, death to the world and all of its appeals, an abundance of other with a minimal of self.
And when the self is not promoted the self is not seen – and so by virtue of the pruning God those with whom He has had the MOST success are typically those who are rarely seen or recognized.
Looking at the teaching here we cannot help but note that a branch can do NOTHING to clean itself up.
It is fortified internally by the vine and it is physically manipulated, pruned, and redirected by the hands of the vine dresser.
This cannot be lost or forgotten when we try and understand how and in what area God is pruning and OUR participation in it – again, we abide IN CHRIST and we SUBMIT to the pruning of the Father’s hand, cleaning us (often by cutting us back) so that even more fruit will come.
The key to understanding this – to seeing that the purging is spiritual is again, in the Greek.
Where it reads:
“every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it” the Greek word is “kathairei”
And it is only used in one other place in scripture and is synonymous with being cleaned by God.
Now read the next and last verse for today with me where Jesus says to His eleven disciples (in verse three)
Jesus suddenly says to them:
“Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”
The Greek word here? katharoi”
Same word just in a different tense.
In other words Jesus tells them that the Father will purge (cleanse) those who abide and produce fruit (kataroi)
And then He tells them how He has cleansed them – “through the Word.”
Which is a spiritual means of cleansing not a physical.
Hang with me as we wrap this teaching up next week.
