I AM, Part 5: I Am the True Vine

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is an old of Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at theLookout.church.

So I want to invite you, if if you're here today, and if you were a mother, um, uh grandmother, spiritual mother, adoptive mother, biological mother, we just want to ask you to stand.

I want to read a blessing over you, and we're gonna have some ushers or some volunteers of some kind hand out some bags.

You guys can go ahead and hand those out.

And uh Pete Gregg wrote a prayer, he posted it today.

Uh he leads the 24-7 prayer movement globally.

I want to pray for this uh as a prayer over us, as a prayer over others that we're holding in our hearts here today, and uh just across the room, if you could um hold hold the mothers here in your heart.

Uh Lord, for mothers today, we pray joy, for orphans, comfort, for not yet mothers, hope, for single mothers, grace, for the lonely, family.

May there be moments of comfort and hope today for the mothers of prodigals, the mothers who've lost children, the mothers who don't know where their children are, the mothers of South Sudan, Ukraine, and Russia whose hearts are surely breaking.

May the embrace of grace displace shame for mothers in prison, for mothers who feel they failed, for mothers who can't be with their kids, for mothers trying to forget determination.

May those who never held their own child for whom today, for whom today may be sadder than it is happy.

Know the love and joy of parenting in the family of God.

For as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you and I will be, and you will be comforted, says the Lord.

Isaiah 66, 13.

So today, God, we lift up all of our mothers here and abroad.

And even today, God, I just I just thank you for streams of living water.

We thank you for refreshing.

We thank you for honor to flood through this house.

We rejoice in you, God, and we thank you for your promises to all mothers today.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's thank our mothers again.

Let's thank our moms.

Um, real quick, on the way out, on your way out today at the info hub, we have these fancy little new magnets printed with a bunch of events that are coming up over the summer.

You want to make sure to get one of those, maybe one per household.

Slap that puppy on your refrigerator, and uh and you won't forget anything.

It'll be great.

Okay, so this morning, uh, if we haven't met yet, my name is Luke, and I'm just gonna be teaching out of John 15.

Today you can open to John 15.

We've been in the Gospel of John for a little while now, um, in a series we're calling I Am.

And uh and we've been turning our attention to the person of Jesus, and there's several reasons for that.

Um there's it's it's critical that in the church there's so many, so many things that we could talk about, but the the simple posture of beholding Jesus, not just what he offers us, but Jesus himself, it's critical to stay anchored in the kingdom of God.

Beholding Jesus.

Jesus isn't just the means to an end, he is the end.

Sometimes when we come in and we're listening to these sermons, we're looking for clues.

What can I do with this message?

How is this going to make my life better?

And certainly Jesus brings us life.

The kingdom of God always offers us into deeper joy and peace and freedom.

But but but aside from God improving our life, Jesus isn't just a means to us having a better life.

Jesus is our life.

He is actually where we are headed.

So if you never get anything that you pray for, the reality is that Jesus Himself is enough for us.

And so today we're we're turning our attention to another I am statement of Jesus.

This is technically the last of the seven statements in the Gospel of John, which is kind of seven as a pattern of completion of the Gospel of John.

This particular statement, I am the true vine, obviously uh for this church, this is very familiar for us.

In fact, last year we did a four or five-week sermon just on the fruitful vineyard in a fertile hill.

There's so much packed in this one thing.

And so we're gonna just gonna look at it from a slightly different angle today.

And uh, so I want to invite you to read with me John 15, we're gonna start in verse one.

Jesus says this.

He says, 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 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.

Let's pray together.

Jesus, we humble ourselves today before your word.

We thank you, Jesus.

That as we turn to your word, we're turning towards your face.

And God, today we acknowledge that what we behold, we become.

And we thank you that as we behold you in the radiance of your beauty, we thank you that we are transformed from one degree of glory to another.

We thank you, God, to remove the veils from our eyes.

To see you clearly, God.

It's what we need, it's what our hearts long for.

We welcome you, Holy Spirit.

Be honored in this place.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this particular passage, I'm guessing across this room, most of us are familiar with I am the vine, you are the branches.

Oftentimes, though, what happens is we we look at this passage and we read it primarily devotionally, like personal devotion.

And so we sit with it and we picture uh God Jesus as the vine, us as the branches, and what it means to abide.

And that's not it, that's not a bad way to read it.

But it what's really interesting when you look at this contextually or historically, there's a lot more going on here.

This whole idea of the vine and the branches, it wasn't just a one-off metaphor that Jesus was kind of picking out of a slew of different directions he could have gone and said, let's try the vine and the branches and see if this sticks with these guys.

The vine and the branches, the whole idea of the vineyard in the scripture, anytime that the first century Jews would hear Jesus talking about vines and vineyard, it was an unmistakable connection with age-old promises.

They knew exactly what he was talking about.

And in this particular passage, this came right off of John 14, where Jesus indicates to his followers, his disciples, listen, this thing is about to wrap up.

I'm not going to be with you very much longer.

Um and so his conversation started to change.

This whole John 14 through 17, we know as uh some some theologians call the upper room discourse.

And so the conversations get far more intimate because he's inviting them into these are some things that you are going to need to know to hang on to, to root yourself in in the days to come, because you're not going to understand what the heck is going on.

And so he was he was getting far more intimate with his language, which is why he's pulling from um this imagery of the vine and the branches.

But what's interesting that aside from the metaphor, again, this idea of the vineyard was baked into their culture in several different ways.

Archaeologists, um, looking at this time frame between the old and new, some um archaeologists have actually found uh Jewish coins engraved with a vine.

It was actually on some of the currency of the day.

Um, also, uh at this point, the temple, as we know, was a centerpiece of Jewish life, Jewish culture, the worship, the identity of God's people.

It was the place that they would go to offer sacrifices.

It was the anchor point, a specific place where God was dwelling among his people, where they would bring sacrifices to him.

But at the gate, actually at one of the gates uh of the temple of uh in the area, above the gate, there was uh actually an artwork of a vine that was above one of the temple gates.

And so it's very likely that when Jesus is talking about the vine and the branches, they very well could have been standing at the gates of this temple.

He could have been holding a coin in his hands.

Maybe he was out in a field and actually a vineyard and pulling up some grapes and just admiring them while they're at it.

But just imagine if he was at the temple gate and he said, Listen, something I need you to know.

You see these grapes up here above the temple, you see this vine, which is a promise of the promise of the people of God to the people of Israel.

And Jesus turns to his disciples and says, See these gates, listen, I am the true vine.

You see this vine, but I am the true vine, which would have caused their jaws to drop a little bit.

Because they had been taught that the very center point of fruitfulness was their religion and their ethnicity.

That's what they were trusting in in their life.

That's what they were trusting in for blessing and fruitfulness and life.

But Jesus came primarily for them.

This this changing the picture, changing the paradigm, he came to upend two paradigms for for his followers, religion and nationalism.

And we're just gonna start there for a second.

By the way, there's gonna be a lot of teaching and quotes in this this whole thing.

So you're we're gonna go through a lot of uh different things here.

So just hang with me today.

Um we're gonna start with what he was doing, he was redirecting their attention from what they were trusting in for fruitfulness to himself, who he was revealing in this particular passage as the true vine.

Okay?

So the first thing he he was wanting to do for his guys, for his followers, his dudes, was he was helping them understand that your fruitfulness isn't just your dedication to the law and the prophets and the temple.

It was gonna come, and it wasn't gonna come from your ability to be God's chosen people, but it was gonna come through him.

Because nearly every passage of scripture in the Old Testament that talks about the vineyard, um, think Isaiah 5, which we've talked about a lot of a fruitful vineyard on a fertile hill.

It's a really beautiful picture, and then it goes south because we see that his promise for his people to be like a vineyard bearing fruit, they weren't actually able to do that.

They could never be righteousness enough.

And so God would have to call their grapes sour grapes and wild grapes.

He's like, these grapes are trash because you're trying to do this in your own strength.

Your righteousness cannot produce that kind of fruit.

And yet, as a people, they were kind of still running the same place, the whole religious system.

They were trying to perfect a way of being the kind of people of God that he was actually proud in.

So in this particular uh context, religion was a false vine.

It was a false find back then, and it's a false find today.

Religion is a false vine, it doesn't actually produce the fruit that we hope for.

When we live believing we can earn God's favor and blessing through good behavior or performance, then we are trusting in the vine of religion.

Anyone here today?

When we live in that kind of way, then we're trusting in the vine of our own good works.

And sometimes it's, you know, in church world, we you know, we know that, but but it it's like sometimes it just creeps into our thinking.

If maybe if I pray more, then God will heal me.

Maybe if I attend church more, then God will be less mad at me.

Maybe if I do more good things, it'll kind of offset the bad things.

If I can, if I'm generally a good person, and you know, and if I keep my face off the news, you know, if I'm kind of if I'm at least a little bit better than the lowest wrong on the ladder, right?

Then uh then maybe that's what keeps me in good standing with God.

But listen, religion always leads to two things.

It always leads to shame or disappointment, and sometimes both.

It always does one of those two things.

Religion always leads us to either shame or disappointment.

Shame from not being enough, not measuring up, not getting it right.

I would ask you to show your hands, but I think probably, you know, that would probably drive the point home.

You don't need to raise your hands for being in shame.

I've felt that before, I'm sure you felt that.

The burden of shame of this voice that says you can never get it right.

And it robs us, it it steals joy, right?

But if it's not shame that religion produces, it's disappointment.

Because sometimes what happens is if we do feel like we're getting it right, maybe you're living a life that's actually looks pretty good.

You're doing great.

You're doing fine, you're loving your wife and your kids, jobs going well, right?

Could you give 10% of this or that or the other?

Whatever.

Sometimes we live in a way and we're actually like, I think I'm kind of crushing it right now.

And then what happens is something goes south.

God didn't heal that person in your life like you thought he would.

God didn't get an opportunity passes you by that you thought you were owed, and what happens is then religion turns on God and says, God, you were supposed to have come through for me because I was faithful to you for X, Y, and Z.

The amount of people I know that are still caught up in either shame or disappointment, I mean, it's trainwrecking the faith of a whole generation.

Which is why Jesus would say, Listen, that religion like that doesn't bear fruit.

And he would go to his guys and say, This vine that you're trusting in, you need to know that I am the true vine.

In other words, if you're not feeling like you're measuring up, it's okay because I got you.

I'm the true vine.

I got you, I got your back.

But second of all, I got your back and you had nothing to do with it.

You did not earn that at all.

It wasn't because it wasn't because I was excited about your, you know, it wasn't because you did something and you jumped through the right hoops.

Like, I'm doing this out of the overflow of my love for you.

It's by grace we are saved.

And so the true vine shows up on the scene to liberate us from shame and disappointment that religion brings.

But the second thing that Jesus was kind of doing here, he was kind of redirecting this um, you know, this inherent nationalism that was in the hearts of uh the Jews.

They were, they were, they believed through the promises of God that through their ethnicity, that the blessing was going to come through their ethnicity.

Not only did they bring their performance with uh that their performance would bring life, they believed that fruitfulness was an invitation just for the Jews.

They had forgotten that Jesus was going to bless the whole world through the Jews, but not just for the Jews.

And so, as they were holding on to these promises, they were dreaming of a day when their nation-state would be restored, they'd be able to kick out those pesky Romans, they would be able to establish finally God's government on earth.

And then and only then, everything would be perfect, God's plan would be right back on track.

Jesus said, I am the vine.

And not only did the Gentiles get invited to be full participants of the promise, but Jesus never, it's interesting, he never actually rallied around politics because he was establishing a different kind of kingdom that didn't depend on the cooperation of local governments.

We could go deep here.

I'm not going to today.

I'm just gonna just I'm just gonna provoke it a little bit because we are headed into another election season and it's gonna get weird again.

It's already weird, it's already in our bones, but Jesus has come to liberate us of the leaven of Herod, the leaven of Caesar, the leaven of the Pharisees.

No, to be clear, we believe in the need for righteous and just lawmaking.

We believe in the participation as citizens in our nation.

We love our nation.

We believe that we are to be good patriots and to actually love and care for the land, the nation, the people group God has called us to, whatever nation on earth that is.

And so, because of that, we participate and we vote, we pray for laws that lead to life and flourishing, that lead to righteousness.

And we do believe that laws, that God wants righteous lawmakers and righteous laws in the land.

But at the end of the day, no human government can deliver the promise of eternal life.

Brennan Manning in his book Lion and the Lamb, he said this.

He said, But with the risen victorious Jesus at the center of your life, you win.

That was all the early Christian community had against Jerusalem, Rome, Athens, and the Christians still won.

That's not rhetoric, that's history.

They only had Jesus, and we keep thinking we need something else.

I'll just let that settle in for a second.

Jesus came to expose the things that we trust in that lead to life and flourishing, and to invite us into a new kind of kingdom, which means sometimes the government cooperates and sometimes it doesn't.

And we do our place as citizens in our nation, but the kingdom of God is without end.

That was so good, Luke.

I'm so glad I came on Mother's Day today to hear that.

I'm joking.

Because that was that that applause was forced.

I don't receive that anyways.

Um one of the things we have to do, those are a couple things that Jesus had to kind of expose as the true vine.

He was kind of, he he made a di differentiation.

That's what's really interesting.

Um, when you look at his language, he didn't say just I am the vine.

He said, I am the true vine, which means that there are such a thing as false vines.

And not only was he revealing himself as Israel's Messiah and the one who was going to do for them what they were supposed to do, or they were promised would happen through them, he was going to be who they were supposed to be, but couldn't be.

But he came to reveal himself as their strength, their nourishment, their food, and their life.

But as the true vine, he was indicating that there also are false vines.

In other words, there are sources of hope that promise life and joy and salvation and the good life so long as you give your life to them.

You guys know that.

There are such things as false vines that make promises to us that say to us, okay, if you give your the best of your attention to me, if you devote yourself to me, if you give me your heart and mind and soul and strength, I'll I'll take care of you.

You're gonna be just fine.

But you gotta give yourself to me, and you're gonna get the kind of life that you want.

That's that's what false finds are.

They're not a whole lot different than what we know in scripture we call idols, which is a hard one for us in the West to kind of have a deep appreciation for like what idols are, because we kind of, you know, in our Western lens, we kind of think of those as like trinkety little objects that sit in your living room, little toys or whatever.

Or, you know, this really primitive.

That's what they used to do, these idol things.

But idols are very real.

The idols, idols are anything that we give our attention to, the best of ourselves to, that make promises to us for the kind of life that we could get if we follow them.

And they the idols make the same promise.

Hey, if you abide in me, if you dwell in me, if you let my words abide in you, I'm gonna things are gonna happen.

Things are gonna get uh go really well in your life.

And so what am I talking about?

At its worst, we can look at idols as things like addictions or gambling, right?

I mean, they they can be as destructive of those kinds of things, substances or um uh pornography, or you know, things that we return to because it provides some kind of we we Believe it has some source that it helps us with, the sustaining source, but more subtly, that we don't often kind of give our attention to.

More subtly, it's things like influence and power and achievement and vanity, things that oftentimes are actually celebrated and sometimes sneak their way into the church as well.

So Andy Crouch sent it like this: all idols began by offering great things very for a very small price.

All idols then fail more and more consistently to deliver on their original promises while ratcheting up their demands, which initially seemed so reasonable for worship and sacrifice.

In the memorable phrase of the psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, idols ask for more and more while giving less and less until eventually they demand everything and give nothing.

And that's how idols destroy lives.

So we've already looked at a couple of the false finds that Jesus was addressing within first century Israel.

But we have some of our own false finds.

In fact, there's a lot of false finds.

And the point here is not to get super negative and downer on Mother's Day, but I think this is really important that we take a look at a few false finds that we're contending with, right?

Because this has to do with the affections of your heart.

This has to do with the things that you trust in, that we trust in.

No, I'm gonna just I'm just gonna hit a few things.

Um that these three things maybe you see where they intersect in your life, but if nothing else, I believe that God wants to just kind of help us to see in the day that we're living in what are the false finds that we're tempted to give our lives to, so that we can be reminded to connect into the true fine of Jesus.

All right?

Okay.

First one, the false fine of secondhand spirituality, the false fine of secondhand spirituality.

You guys know this, but we have to be reminded of this.

We live in a generation like no other.

There is more content before us than any time in history.

Um, in fact, in the 1980s, one copy of the New York Times newspaper contained more information than a man or a woman in the 19th century would have consumed in their entire lifetime.

That's one newspaper in the 80s.

And so there are blessings about this time of like an information age.

We have access to a lot.

I can watch a YouTube video on how to fix my refrigerator, and I will do so.

And it will break again, anyways.

That's another story that I'm I'm working with the Lord on.

Um so uh, you know, we can get we have access to all kinds of information, which is fantastic, but it also can become a false find.

Content consumption can produce a false sense of growth and maturity, especially in the faith.

Have you ever talked to somebody who listened to one podcast on a topic, then all of a sudden they're the resident expert in the family on that particular topic?

I do that all the time, by the way.

Um I love books, I love podcasts, I and so I'm I'm a part of you know this this generation that has access and the blessing of these things, but we're surrounded on every side.

In fact, even in the church, we're surrounded, you are surrounded by such rich content nationally and globally.

You have the ability to sit in front of the best preachers and stream the best conferences and the best, most powerful, most anointed, most revelatory people all around the world.

There's no no no time like today for that.

And so there's good with that.

Um, but the questions we have to ask is: has that improved our faith and dependence on Jesus?

Is it producing more fruitful Christians to have more Christian content?

Is this producing more fruitful Christians?

And see, I would argue content is not necessarily the problem.

When it comes to fruitfulness, it's not that we need more information, more input into our lives.

It's the saturation and permeation of the things that we have learned that leads to deep transformation.

It's not that we don't know the right things, it's just that we haven't let those right things grip us from the inside out.

So this is why Jesus says, Let my words abide in you.

That's what he connects abiding to specifically his words.

You guys get that?

Abiding specifically has to do with letting his words get inside of us.

He cleans us with his words.

Colossians 3.16, Paul says this, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And so even Paul is talking about let the words of Christ let it get in you.

You gotta sing it, you gotta be in it, you gotta move in it, you gotta teach it to one another, you gotta admonish one another.

Let the words of Christ not just float on the atmosphere, let it get into your bones.

I had a conversation, I got to uh go down and spend a little time with some friends uh down at um uh a community called House Denver.

It was Upper Room Denver.

There's one of their leaders, Corey Russell.

I um um went and had some time this is this this week, and he was talking about one of their discipleship strategies with their young, their their kids in their school is you know, they're they're they're spending a ton of time in the prayer room, but in the prayer room, they're they're speaking the word of God, they're singing the word of God, they're pacing back and forth, they're dancing the word of God, they're doing everything they can to get the word of God into their bones.

And he's he called it, he's like, I call it the singing seminary.

He's like, there's something about not just knowing the right things, but getting it to where it's in your breath, it's in your being, it just is spilling out.

And this is what I believe is you know, we we we have to be aware of the vine of secondhand spirituality, knowing things without letting them lead to transformation, versus abiding in the word of God.

It's because when we connect to the true vine, listen to this when we connect to the true vine, just a few words of Jesus deeply lived will produce more fruit, more fruit than all the content the world has to give.

Because how does our faith stack up from the saints from the last 2,000 years?

We're in this weird bubble.

We have access to everything, and yet transformation is an inch deep.

And I'm not just that's not an accusation on any of us.

I'm just saying, as a general, probably observation.

We have access to everything, but in a lot of places very little depth.

And yet the saints of old had access to very little, but what the little have they did have, it got deep.

It got in there.

It worked them in from the inside out.

Just a few words of Jesus deeply lived will produce more fruit than all the content the world has to give.

Okay.

Second one, the false fine of self-occupation.

False fine of self-occupation.

That sounds really intense, doesn't it?

Um, so one of the things that we're contending with, I think, in in this particular time and day in our part of the world, is the dominant expression in Western religion has moved to this quasi-spiritual therapy, what uh a professor at Notre Dame called moralistic therapeutic deism.

He said, We're not a Christian nation, we're moralistic therapeutic deism.

So we're trying to become better, like sets the therapy part.

We we think there's a God, but if there's a God, we don't know who he is, but he's trying to help us improve our lives and just become better people.

That's that's kind of the vague idea.

And also a lot of it, religion is a journey into the self for the sake of self-improvement.

So a lot of it is about understanding yourself, getting into myself so I can improve.

No, this false vine says you will be fruitful if you simply find yourself and live out of your authentic self.

Now, this was a little hard to parse out because there's some half-truths in here, okay?

There's actually some parts of this that are true.

This is where we have to do some work.

Um, but what's happening in every part of our culture, not just the church, every part of our culture, uh, is championing emotional health, mindfulness, internal well-being, and therapeutic experiences.

And a lot, a lot of, you know, with religious zeal, we're championing these things.

Now, Carl Truman, author of a book, this fantastic book called Strange New World, as he is assessing kind of our current moment, he says, the modern self then is not accountable to theologians who preach how to conform oneself to God, but to the therapists who counsel how to be true to oneself, thus giving rise to what Philip Reef described as the triumph of the therapeutic.

So let me clarify a couple things.

This might sound funny coming for me because I'm a huge champion of emotional health.

For this church, for my friends, I believe in emotional health.

I believe in well-being.

I believe in self-awareness, um, therapy and counseling.

I think everybody should have counselors and therapists, both in the church and outside of the church.

I think that's a fantastic.

We have to explore different avenues to help understand the work that's going on in the interior of our lives.

That most of the time we skate upon the surface and don't do that work.

But um there there are there are some differences.

Psalm 139, David sings about search me and know me.

God, you know me from the inside and the out.

You've knit me in my mother's womb.

You know every thought before I think it, you you know me from afar.

Where can I go from your presence?

So even David was, he was, he would sing about the Spirit of God investigating his heart and searching him through and through and examining every fiber of his being.

Um and and we see that he does that.

Even Paul talks about, you know, do away with these kinds of heart conditions and put on these kinds of these kinds of behaviors.

Paul was very specific about that, but ridding ourselves of the things that lurk from the on the inside.

But the the really here's the here's the turn.

At the end of the day, health and well-being.

Listen, health and well-being is not an end in and of itself, it's to be whole unto the Lord.

It's to be whole unto the Lord and to welcome Jesus into the deepest parts of our hearts so that he can transform us into his image.

So oftentimes in our culture, we'll stop it.

I just need to go find myself, right?

I just need to get to the mountains and go find myself.

That's nothing wrong with that.

I do the same thing.

Sometimes I gotta like, God, what is going on in my heart?

But when we position ourselves in a way where we let God get inside of us, what he's doing there is not just to come in and just leave us how we are.

He's come to separate the false self from the true self and to invite us to conform with him into his likeness.

That means he doesn't just leave, he always meets us where exactly where we are, but he doesn't leave us where we are.

He doesn't leave us just as we are.

So we move inward so that we can move outward into a life ordered by God as our King and not just ordered by what my feelings tell me is authentic.

Okay.

So I don't go in simply to find myself and my true entity, I my true identity.

I go on a journey with the Father so he can reveal my true identity.

It doesn't matter how I identify myself, it matters how he identifies me.

Again, there's a lot there.

But part of living into the family of God is we have a father who has things to say about us.

He has things to say about you, he has thoughts about you.

You know that?

The father has specific thoughts about you.

And our culture says you need to go find out who you are.

No, no, no, listen.

The invitation from the father is to come sit in his lap while he tells you everything you've ever wanted to know about your truest self in him.

And then guess what happens out of that?

Fruitfulness.

So the false vine of self-occupation leads us only into ourselves with ourselves as God.

The true vine of Jesus leads us into ourself so he can reshape us and lead us out into fruitfulness and life and joy and peace.

Somebody say amen.

Come on.

So we do the things we we do we get we do, silence and solitude.

We look at our rhythms and our practices, but at the end of the day, true rest and Sabbath rest comes in the person, the face of Jesus.

Awesome.

You guys are digging this.

I love it.

Third vine, third, third vine, the false vine of success.

So coming from Indiana, one thing I love about Colorado is this state attracts people generally with ambition.

Um Indiana doesn't attract people with a lot of ambition.

Let me just tell you like that.

Um in Colorado, there's there's not there's not a lot of underachievers coming to Colorado these days.

Okay.

Um be it a career, athletics, health, recreation, these this is a place where people are ready to get after it, ready to crush life, right?

I'm gonna summit something.

I don't even know what it is.

I'm gonna summit something today.

Seriously.

I mean, this is the way this is this is in the air.

I will dominate something with my time and energy today.

Um, and there's nothing wrong with achievement.

We actually are wired to do significant things.

We're wired for our lives to mean something.

I love hard work.

I work hard, I try to rest hard.

I I I love it.

I love all of that.

The problem is success is a moving target.

The false find of success always puts happiness at arm's reach on the other side of the next achievement, be it an experience, an accolade, education, or advancement.

And again, none of those things are necessarily wrong in themselves.

But we have to kind of come back to what is this, what do the scriptures say about success?

The scriptures don't say a lot about success.

The scriptures say a lot about faithfulness and obedience.

So, what is success in the kingdom of God?

We have to kind of redefine that because if we're trusting in the false vine of success to make us have the feeling of fruitfulness in our lives, we're always going to be left falling short.

In fact, by every worldly measure, Jesus was an absolute failure.

Jesus was rejected, he was misunderstood, he gained followers, but then lost them all because he said bizarre things.

He said things like, eat my flesh and drink my blood, and he didn't explain himself.

You're supposed to do, you're supposed to at least explain yourself, right?

So he'd gain followers, then he'd lose them all right away.

He couldn't build a brand.

He couldn't build a good enough foundation.

At the end, he had really only 12 real disciples.

One of them didn't even work out.

Even Jesus wasn't a perfect, perfect disciple maker.

One of his guys just totally flipped out and betrayed him.

The other ones didn't do super well either.

Peter, he didn't even know how to use a sword.

Um, you know, he goes and he goes into a garden, he tries to wage war against a Roman soldier, and he cut, somehow he cuts off an ear.

It's like that's the best you can do is cut off an ear?

Like, at least, like, not even a shoulder or something like that.

Like, how bad do you have to be?

And so these guys didn't quite get it.

His and Jesus' career ends with a public crucifixion.

Um and so if you're kind of like asking, was Jesus successful?

It's like, well, yeah, we obviously we know the good church answer is yes, but why was he successful?

Because we have to redefine success.

My favorite definition of success is this success is doing God's will in God's way and on God's timetable.

God's will and God's way and on God's timetable.

And we see this all the time in the life of Jesus.

He didn't come to do his own will, he came to do the Father's will.

And even his first miracle, the wedding of Cana, he's at this party with his mom.

Which is always a little awkward to go to a party with your mom.

No offense, mom.

But he's at a party, uh a celebration, a wedding celebration, they run out of wine.

And Jesus' mom's like, Jesus, hey, let's kick this into high gear.

And Jesus is like, Mom, come on, mom, it's not my time.

And she's like, so she tells the servants, she snaps at the servants, just do whatever he says.

He's gonna do it anyways.

I'll get my way.

That's what his mom was thinking.

So she somehow he does the miracle and he turns something common like water into wine.

But even in that pet passage, Jesus was paying attention to not just doing the will of God, but doing it in God's way and on his timetable.

And sometimes success in the kingdom of God, it looks like failure.

Sometimes you start that business and it it fails for years, or it just doesn't do what you thought, even though it's like, God, I thought you told me to do this.

Or you decide to homeschool your kids and it just you feel like a total failure half the time.

Or you uh who knows?

Uh you you you you go out of limb to follow God and it looks like it goes opposite.

In the kingdom of God, that's not failure.

When you're following Jesus and you're discerning the heart of God, when you're abiding in the vine and listening to the voice of God, when he leads you in a place and it doesn't look like it's working out, that doesn't mean it's failure.

Your obedience and your faithfulness actually is a sign that God is going to produce fruit in your life one way or the other.

That's the gift of the true vine of Jesus.

We do things sometimes that may look ridiculous on the surface, but rather than judging ourselves based on the world's metrics or based on what other people are telling us, we get to say, I am saying yes to Christ, and in due time he is going to produce fruit from this that will glorify his name.

Some of you that should be very liberating because you are beating yourself up because your life doesn't appear like you were told it should look at this point in time.

But when you invite in the in the true vine, everything changes.

Viktor Frankel, he was um uh an Austrian psychiatrist, a Jew actually who was taken into Auschwitz.

He ended up writing this.

He said, Don't aim at success.

The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you're going to miss it.

For success like happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

That's in man's search for meaning, which is should be mandatory.

When abiding in the true vine, God orders your life and pursuits so that when you're in the will of God, your life means something.

I pray that gets you.

Because it is a false vine.

And a lot of us have trusted in that vine, and it's led us down time and time again.

And Jesus says, Come to me.

I'm gonna show you life.

I'm gonna show you life.

Um worship team, you can come up.

We're gonna we'll land a plane here very soon.

We're gonna pray into something.

But but the on this thing of success.

It's it's amazing though that what we can do when we're in divine, when we give glory to God.

I love the story on Sunday, July 20th, 1969.

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed their lunar module, the Eagle, on the Sea of Tranquility.

The first thing they did was celebrate communion.

Because of a lawsuit filed by Madeline Murray O'Hare, when NASA aired the reading from Genesis by the astronauts of Apollo 8, it decided to black out the part of the broad broadcast.

Algernon, an elder in the Presbyterian Church USA, took out a communion kit provided by Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas.

In the one sixth gravity, the wine started curling up on the side of the cup gracefully, and it started to kind of rise up the side of the cup.

And just before eating the bread and drinking the cup, Aldrin read from the Gospel of John.

I am divine.

So this morning I want to pray for us here today across the room.

Just close your eyes with me, and um we're gonna invite Holy Spirit to speak to us.

One of the things that's interesting when God reveals himself as I am in the scriptures in Exodus, he does so through the burning bush.

Somehow he spoke through a bush that was on fire yet not being destroyed.

And the reality is our lives are meant to be consumed by God.

We are meant to live on fire.

That is, I believe, God's design for every person that we would be lit on fire.

But the truth is, Jesus is the only one that can consume us without destroying us.

Every other vine, every other pursuit, every other idol, every other thing we give it to will consume us and destroy us.

We give our lives to Jesus, he'll consume us while still letting life come through us.

This is what I am does.

And across the room here today, as I'm talking and talking about these false finds, you might be here thinking that this last season you've been searching for that the secret, the formula to a happy life, a fruitful life.

But you've just, you're just kind of, maybe you just feel like, gosh, the things I've given myself, it just hasn't quite produced what I wanted to.

And maybe even feel like it's good things, maybe even churchy things.

But maybe churchy things done with the spirit of religion, the spirit of secondhand spirituality.

It just whatever it is, maybe it just hasn't worked for you.

And you're, as I'm talking today, you just feel this craving.

I need to know the true vine.

I need to know the true vine.

So across the room, I just encourage you to just speak that out to Jesus.

Say, Jesus, I need to know you.

I want to abide in you.

I want your words to abide in me.

Show me.

Show me who you are.

Show me what it means to live with the freedom and joy, righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Holy Spirit, would you show us here today the false finds that we connect in with, the pursuits that we abide in that we give the best of our energy and our thoughts to, thinking that if we just a little bit more, and it's one of these days it's going to come through.

Show us anything that's not properly ordered in you, Jesus, so that we can come into you.

Jesus, we thank you for your promise to prune what doesn't belong, to prune branches that don't bear fruit.

And though that feels like a painful process, we know that that's for our good.

And so, God, we do invite the pruning process.

God, would you show each and every one of us where there's places that are not bearing the fruit that you've called us to bear, that you need to prune away.

Let us feel the tender hand of the Father who is the vine dresser, carefully trimming away what doesn't belong, so that we can bear the life of Jesus.

And maybe there's some in this room, maybe, maybe you're listening, you're like, I'm not even sure I've ever actually connected in with this vine or been grafted in this vine, but I know I need it.

I need, I need, I need Jesus, I need something else in my life.

And we were praying this morning, we just felt like that invitation came front and center.

That there's maybe some individuals that maybe for the first time, maybe it's just been a long time since you prayed this.

So Jesus, I need, I need to be grafted into your vine.

I need the source of life and peace.

And if that's you, just welcome them in wherever you are, just in your own words.

Say, Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, I need you.

Can we say it together today?

Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, I need you.

Say, we need you.

Jesus, we need you.

God, would you hear the cry today from our hearts?

And for those who that is a prayer coming out of the depths of our gut, of our spirit, man.

I just I thank you, Holy Spirit, to rest on each one here today.

I thank you, Father, that that's all you ask is for an invitation.

And you're closer than our next breath, you're closer than we think.

So I bless my friends, God.

I bless all of those.

God, all of us as we seek to be the people abiding in the vine.

We thank you, Jesus, that your words are life.

Your words are life forevermore.

Let's stand together today.

Just say his name, Jesus.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

There's nothing like your name, Jesus.

Abiding is not complicated.

It's not one more thing you have to remember to do.

It's the receiving of a gift of life.

So, Jesus, as we end our time here today, God, I thank you for blessing over your people.

I thank you for blessing over mothers to abide in you today.

And even fathers, Lord God.

I thank you for every member of our family and our household, Sword God, to be marked in your dwelling place, God.

We say that we're your people and we're coming after you, Jesus.

We're coming after you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So we want to invite you a couple things as we kind of officially end our time.

Again, feel free.

Don't feel free to rush, or don't feel free, don't feel forced to rush out.

If you do, there's a photo booth, there's some fundraiser stuff out in the foyer.

Make sure all the flowers are gone, please.

And purchase all the flowers.

Um, we do want to invite some of our ministry team, our prayer ministry team.

They're gonna be available up front.

And listen, if God is working in your life right now, the worst possible thing you can do is ignore it and just walk the other way.

I'm just saying, God is God, God's invitation is before us here today.

And I invite you to come get prayer for anything spoken about.

Maybe you need healing in your body.

Maybe you need healing in your soul or in your mind.

These are people you can trust to pray with.

Um, permits as we leave, please go get your kids first and then bring them back in for conversations.

And if you haven't visited our prayer room yet, follow signs out the door.

Go visit our prayer room to just get some time in the presence of the Lord.

It's on the third floor, it's awesome.

And with that said, Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make his face to shine upon you.

Maybe He may He be gracious to you and give you rest.

Go in the name of Jesus.