I AM // I AM the True Vine [John 15:1-11] (Lee Hanson)

Let's pray for the message and also have a time of pastoral

prayer. Let's pray.

Loving Father, we thank you so much for your grace to us.

Thank you that today we can draw near to you.

You are a God who is not far away, and you delight to draw

near to us. And so as we have sung these

praises and these words of assurance, we thank you for who

you are. Thank you that you are a God who

cares what a friend we have in Jesus.

Thank you so much that during this past week we have

experienced your hand of protection, your hand of

provision and guidance, your love to us as a shepherd, your

care for us as the living eternal God, the Sovereign one

who cares for your children. And now as a church family, we

want to give thanks for answered prayer.

Thank you for bringing Dan and Nikki back safely from overseas.

Thank you for bringing the Fiji team back safely.

Thank you for all your mercies to us and your provision today.

Lord, we bring you our offering. We bring you this in worship to

you with the gratitude and with the prayer that it will be

blessed and multiplied, that you will bless your people, bless

the missionaries and those who receive these gifts that we have

brought to you. Further, we pray for those who

are unwell at this time. We thank you for continued

blessing and recovery for Ria and for Eleanor.

We continue to pray for their healing.

We pray for those who are unwell amongst us.

Lord, we remember those who are seriously unwell and requiring

treatment. We pray for your peace and your

comfort for them and your strength day by day.

Father, we remember the families amongst us.

Thank you for the young ones. Thank you for the gift of new

life. Thank you for the little ones

and for those who care for them. Father, we pray for our elderly

today. We thank you for them.

Thank you for their wisdom. Thank you for their experience

and for their friendship with us.

And we pray that they'll be encouraged in these days that

may be difficult, maybe cold. We pray that they might be

encouraged and strengthened for each day.

Father, today as we approach your word, Lord, we come to you

with reverence as Lee brings the message.

We pray that we'll have open hearts that you will bless your

word to us, that you'll help Lee as he speaks your word.

We thank you for the true vine. We pray that we might abide in

you. And we pray this in Jesus name,

Amen. All right, if you have your

Bibles this morning, go ahead and grab them and turn to John

John 15 · chapter mention

Chapter 15. We are in the 4th week of our I

M series and this is looking at the seven I AM sayings of Jesus

as John recorded them. And today we're looking at I am

the True Vine. Dan asked me to share from this

passage as I've spoken from here before.

So if you one of those people with a really good memory, some

of this might be familiar. If you're new to Hook Annoy, or

if you're bit like me and can't remember what happened last

week, little one, a couple of years ago, this will all be new,

so that'll be good. Alright John, Chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

We're just gonna read out the 1st 11 verses.

Jesus 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.

Well, really you are clean because of the word that I have

spoken to you. Abide in me, and I and you.

As the branch cannot be a 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 be as 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 proved to be My disciples.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you

will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's

commandments and abide in His love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you

and that your joy may be full. This is probably given this

morning. Dear Lord, we thank you for

these words of Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would be

with us this morning as we unpack some of these and look

into them. We just pray that you'd guide

our thoughts and hearts. Help us to have ears to listen

to what you'd have us to learn this morning.

We pray in Jesus name, I mean. So this morning we're going to

look at three things. We're gonna look at the troubled

vine, the true vine, and the triumphant life.

So first of all, why did Jesus use this imagery of a vine?

Like many of the iron statements that we've seen last week, we

looked at shepherd and sheep, other things like bread, light,

door, Rd. These things are just object

lessons from everyday life, and Jesus used these to teach

theological truths to his disciples.

And vines and vineyards were a big part of the life in Israel.

In fact, in the 39 books of the Old Testament, 34 of them

mentioned vines or vineyards. So there's some history to this

imagery as well, this idea that Israel was a vine or a vineyard.

And a number of these times are mentioned in the old system.

And so I want to look at a couple of these.

And so if you want to turn, turn to Genesis chapter 49, almost

Genesis 49 · chapter mention

all the way back to the beginning.

And where? Read this together.

This is from the new King James version.

It's a little bit clearer than the SV in this instance.

It says the sector shall not depart from Judah, nor a

lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.

And to him shall be the obedience of the people, binding

his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's cult to the choice

vine. He washed his garments in wine

and his clothes in the blood of grapes.

So this piece of scripture is a prophetic blessing.

And like a lot of prophecy, there's some dual meaning in it.

The context is Jacob is blessing all of his children, and this

part of the blessing is for Judah and for Judah's offspring.

And the blessing of Judah is that rulers and lawmakers and

kings would come from his descendants.

And then he paints this picture of rich blessings for Judah,

that there would be so many grapes on the vine that you

could tie a donkey up to it and not even worry about how much of

the fruit and the vine that the donkey would eat.

Or the wine flowed so freely you could wash your clothes in it if

you wanted to. And so this is the direct

listing to Judah. But on top of this, we see this

mention of Shiloh. And this is the Messiah.

And the promise is that he will come through this line of kings,

through the line of Judah. And of course that was fulfilled

in Jesus. You can't help but notice the

other parallels though in this passage.

You know Jacob spoke these words 1700 years before Jesus came

into Jerusalem. Riding on a donkey's coat is the

true vine to spill his blood so we can have our garments washed

clean by his sacrifice. Even today when we take

communion, we use grape juice as a reminder of the sacrifice His

blood spilt for us. No, this was a positive

blessing. It was good.

This blessing of riches. It was a blessing.

Promise of the Messiah coming there was all very positive.

So if we zoom forward 1000 years, we get to Isaiah the

prophet and he tells us that there's some problems and Israel

and Isaiah chapter 5, it's like a love song.

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

It's a love song about God lovingly building a vineyard,

vineyard for his people, Israel. He made it the very best.

He gave it the best location, the best soil, the best

protection, everything the vineyard could need to flourish

and produce the best grapes. But if we pick it up there in

verse 3, it says, and now our inhabitants of Jerusalem and men

of Judah judge between me and my vineyard, what more was there to

do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?

When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild

grapes? And now I will tell you what I

will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it

shall be devoured. I will breakdown its wall and it

shall be trampled down. Despite the very best of

everything that God had provided for Israel, the vineyard was

failing. That was producing bad fruit

rather than good. This even tells us, for the

vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel, and the men

of Judah are his pleasant planting.

And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed for

righteousness. But behold an outcry.

The vine. This vineyard was producing bad

fruit and the reason for this in Israel was means sin.

Sinful men had taken God's blessing the very good

conditions He had provided and used them for their own gain,

bringing evil and not good. So God says he will tear it down

and he will replace it. The broken vineyard would be

rebuilt when Shiloh the Messiah comes.

And so from Isaiah, we zoom forward another 740 years and we

find Jesus, the promised Messiah.

And as he journeyed through Israel, he saw the results of a

broken religious system, a system that was meant to produce

good grapes but that only produced wild ones.

And the side came, not as many were expecting.

They thought he would come and rid Israel of all its enemies,

to get rid of the Romans who were ruling over them at the

time. But he came to replace a broken

vine with the true vine himself. We see Jesus constantly fought

with the religious leaders. He called them things like

Vipers and whited sepulchres because they were responsible

for the spiritual wellbeing of Israel.

They were meant to be looking after God's vineyard.

They've taken something which should have been good and

twisted it for their own greed and pride.

So this troubled vine, this religious vineyard needed to be

torn down and replaced with something bitter, something that

couldn't be corrupted by man's sin.

So in Jesus is saying, there I am the true vine.

He's saying that this broken vineyard would flourish again.

This time the vine couldn't fail because it was not reliant on

sinful man. It was built on a sinless

Messiah. That's fine.

Was the perfect vine. So we come to the true Vine.

We come to Jesus, you know, in Jesus day there was a lot of

different religious ideas, beliefs and practises.

There was a lot of different vines in the vineyard and this

hasn't changed even to today. So thought I'd have a little

look at the vineyard of New Zealand.

Oi dug into some of the stats from the last century in census.

That's not century last census in 2023 to see what vines we

have in our country. And so the biggest vine is this

ugly thing. This is the vine of no religion.

51% of our population in the last census have passed the 50%

mark for the first time. It's sad to think that as you go

about your day at work or school in your neighborhood, did over

half the people that that you see have no belief in anything

outside of themselves? They're their own God.

There's no higher purpose, no direction, no power in their

lives, Sandy. This number goes up.

The quality of our society goes down.

You have to look in the news to see that's the case.

A self focused society based on what man thinks and not what God

sees will not thrive. So what's the next step?

Well, this is one we could be happy with.

This is the Christianity, Those Who took Christianity and the

religious column 32%. But even that number has gone

down in the five years since the previous census has gone down

5%. There was 37 and of course not

all that claimed to be Christian are Christian and will have a

look at that a little bit more shortly.

So there are some other vines in there, Hinduism, Islam, LDS for

the most and the next most common.

I was all I was surprised to see this number was quite small.

Atheist .13 and they gave the gave the punchline away there.

There's more. You're more likely in New

Zealand to meet a Jedi than you are an atheist, which I thought

was kind of interesting. I want to zoom in on the the

vine of Christianity. 32% claimed to be Christian in our

land. So big some question how do we

know where the true Vine is? And all of us?

Jesus helps us out a little bit there.

He sees you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to

you. That's one verse three of our

passage that we read this morning.

Jesus words, his message, what we call the gospel is the only

true path to forgiveness and to wholeness.

The disciples, they didn't have the completed word of God like

we do. They couldn't read the New

Testament cause they were still living in it.

So Jesus is the living gospel. They were forgiven and made

clean because of their faith in what Jesus said and who he

claimed to be. As Jesus was walking with his

disciples, He was teaching them what this new vine would look

like, tearing down the old religious fines to replace it

with something better and new. The New Vine We're pleased to be

able to read the Bible, the completed Word of God today, and

specifically the Gospel of John. John was the one disciple who

really stressed this need for faith in Jesus.

He was led to write this gospel at the end of the 1st century, a

little bit later than the other synoptic gospels of Matthew,

Mark and Luke, And John focuses on the deity of Christ and

belief in their truth. In John's Gospel, the word

believe is used about 100 times, almost twice as many as the

other gospels. So what did John emphasise?

Belief so much? Because it's not enough to know

about Jesus. We have to do something with

that. Your faith and trust and belief

must be in Him. So what about those who look

like the Vine and our illustration but are not part of

the true Vine? Well, this is where we see the

God here that work in perfect unison, God the Father working

with the God the Son. We see this and this is 12 N six

of our passage and verse one that we see that Jesus sees my

father is the vine dresser in verse 2.

He said every branch in me that he does not bear fruit He takes

away, and very sexy says if anyone does not abide in me, he

is thrown away like a branch and Withers.

And the branches they gathered, thrown into the fire and boomed.

You might have noticed that illustration on the PowerPoint

this morning. It's got a bit smaller.

God the Father is the vine dresser and He removes anyone

who is not genuine in their faith.

I think one of the scariest passages in the whole Bible was

Matthew Chapter 7. This is 21 to 24 sees not

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of

heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in

heaven on that day, Minnie will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we

not prophecy in your name and cast out demons in your name and

do many mighty works in your name?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

The scary thing about this passage is that these people

that Jesus are talking about here would call themselves

Christians. They would be within our 32%.

They proclaim Jesus as Lord. They prophecy in Jesus name.

They even do mighty works in his name, even casting out demons.

And yet they lack one thing. They look like the vine.

They're next to the vine, but they're not in the vine.

Anyone can call themselves a Christian.

People tend to do it all the time that you're not on the

vine, you're not a Christian just because you claim the

title. You know you're not in the Vine

by how religious you look, the family you grew up in, the

church you go to, the people you hang out with, or even the

Christian service that you do. None of that makes you a

Christian. You must repeat of your sin and

your faith and trust fully be in the true vine.

There can only be 1 Lord of your life and it has to be Jesus.

Jesus experience at first hand someone who looked like the vine

but wasn't in the vine. He had these 12 men and didn't

eat 12 disciples and he was close to.

If we look at that just after our passage this morning in this

15, this is no longer do I call you servants, for the servant

does not know what his master is doing.

But I have called you friends for all that I have heard from

my father. I have made known to you.

He was closer to these men at times than his own family.

They've been with them through his whole journey.

They'd heard him preach, seen his miracles, and even done some

miracles themselves in his name. And you win.

One of these men were not in the vine.

Judas looked like all the other disciples.

His faith was not in Jesus, though he was not in the vine,

and he would ultimately betrayed Jesus.

We can see the difference in attitude if we go to the Last

Supper. It seems there.

Matthew 26 verse 20. When it was evening, he reclined

Matthew 26:20

at table with a 12 and as they were eating he said, Truly I say

to you, one of you will betray me.

And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after

another, Is it I, Lord? If you jump down to this 25, it

says Judas, who would betray him, answered and said, Is it I,

Rabbi? He said to him, You have said so

you see the difference there? Leaving the disciples said to

the Lord, Is it I Lord, that will betray you?

And one of the side will see is that I, Rabbi Jesus was not his

Lord, he was just a teacher to Judas.

So the question is, who is Jesus to you?

Is he just a teacher? Did he say and do some good

things, or is he your Lord? Romans 8 or sort of Roman's tin

this nines he's If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the

dead, you will be saved. So we need to be sure of this

this morning. Can you confidently say that you

are in Christ and that He is in you, that He is your vine and

you are His branch? From their starting point, we

can have a triumphant life. You know, most people out there

think that Christianity limits your ability to enjoy your life,

that it's all about rules and regulations that holds you back

from living free. Like so many things.

And in life, the truth is often the opposite of what our culture

tells us. So let's see what Jesus sees.

A triumphant look, life look, look looks like and verse 11

there he says these things I have spoken to you that my joy

may be in you and that your joy may be full.

Most people are pursuing happiness.

We all want to be happy, right? To experience joy in our lives.

As parents, we want our kids to grow up and be happy.

The world tells us that to do that, you have to have lots of

money, a nice house, nice car, good job, respect, fun, bigger

muscles, all that kind of stuff. If you get all those, you'll be

happy. That's what the world tells us.

But we know that this endless pursuit is never satisfied.

Chasing these things and even attaining some of them doesn't

bring the satisfaction we are told it will.

All these things can come and go either instantly or over time.

If your happiness is tied up in them, it can be devastating.

So when Jesus says he wants to give you his full joy, he's not

talking about a life of comfort or of ease or of getting all the

things that you want out of life.

It's actually better than that. The joy that Jesus talks about,

this full joy comes from two things that we're going to look

at now, relationship and purpose.

I'm going to see this from our passage.

This you want to see that full joy comes from relationship.

God created all the emotions that we feel.

Love, joy, contentment, happiness.

God created these. So it makes sense that we need a

relationship with the author of these things to fully experience

them. The 1st and most important

relationship is of course with the true Vine, with God the Son.

And verse 9 Jesus sees as the Father has loved me, so have I

loved you. Abide in my love.

Think about that love for a second.

As the Father loves the Son, so Jesus loves you in the same way

as the with the same magnitude. As the Father loves his Son,

Jesus loves you. It's an unconditional,

unchanging 100% love and abiding, and their love is a

pretty good place to be. Sometimes we don't think we're

very good at giving or receiving love.

We might not think ourselves to be worthy of love.

We might not trust the motives of someone trying to give us

love. Many times in this fallen world

we are hurt by those who are supposed to love us that we

humans fail. God does not.

His love is pure, reliable, and perfect.

You can experience true joy in your love and your life by

abiding in His love. For John, the author of our

Gospel this morning, this was an amazing thought to him.

In fact, in the Gospel of John, he never even uses his own name.

He only ever refers to himself as the disciple that Jesus

loved. He was so blown away by the fact

that God the Son would love him and would treat him as a friend

and would put him at the centre of his earthly ministry, that he

used that title instead of his own name.

And we can claim that title too. That disciple that Jesus loves.

What a privilege that is. There's a little verb that

happens all the way through this passage this morning, and the

word is abide, and the triumphant life is a life of

abiding in Christ. So what does that mean?

Certainly doesn't mean coming to church on a Sunday morning and

forgetting about Jesus for the rest of the week.

To abide with Christ as an even closer relationship than you

would have with your husband or wife or a best friend is to do

every moment of everyday with Jesus.

And the more we abide with Jesus and involve Him in the

day-to-day activities of our lives, the more our friendship

with Him develops. It's doing all of life with Him,

the big important things down to the smallest things.

Paul tells the Philippian church to pray without ceasing.

And we think, how is that possible?

We have other stuff to do, right?

We've got to work and we got commitments.

We've got family things, but when we understand this idea of

abiding with Christ, we realise it's not one or the other.

It's not prey or work or prey or take care of other commitments

as to do both. To abide is to do all those

things with Christ. It means we leave those lines of

communication open even when we're busy with our day-to-day

activities or even if we don't have anything to say.

Abiding and praying without ceasing is the same thing as

doing everything in life with your best friend.

When we abide with Jesus, something starts to change

within us. As we learn more about Him, we

start to view the war world more through His eyes that priorities

begin to change and we can begin to become more focused on the

things that He cares about. Look at this incredible verse

from first number seven. If you abide in Me, and My words

abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done

for you. When we abide in Christ, when

His words abide in us, we desire what He desires.

The needs of those 51% of people who don't know Christ we

mentioned earlier, or the needs of our brothers and sisters in

Christ become far more important than money, positions or status.

And He promises to answer our prayer in these things.

So full joy comes through a deep relationship with the true Vine,

through abiding with Jesus. Secondly, we also see that full

joy comes from purpose and justice.

As we find joy through abiding in Christ, we find purpose

through abiding in Christ as well.

So what is our purpose? Verse 5 it says I am the vine,

you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in Him.

Here it is the bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do

nothing. The Grapevine just has one

purpose, right? To grow grapes when we were in

the Viner price, we had one purpose too.

To grow fruit. Sounds like it should be easy,

but it's not. Our lives are busy, we get

distracted, we get caught up in the day-to-day things and we

forget our purpose. Sometimes we even fall into the

trap of trying to produce our own fruit.

There is good news from our passage though.

If we are in Christ and we abide with Him, we will bear fruit.

Just as those who are not in the vine cannot be a fruit, those

are in the vine can't help but be a fruit.

We are told twice in this passage, though we can't be a

fruit by ourselves. The fruit comes from the life

given from the vine, the strength, the nutrients.

The power is drawn through the vine and out to us, the

branches. The closer we get to Jesus, the

more fruit will be produced. The fruit grows through us and

not by us, and hurting our lives doesn't need to be some green

gesture, right? Some huge thing Jesus tells us

that even giving a brother or sister a cup of water in Jesus's

name is fruit. And Jesus puts a lot of emphasis

on loving each other and growing fruit by this means.

We see in verse 12, This is my commandment, that you love one

another as I have loved you. So here's the challenge this

morning. Do you love the people around

you, your brothers and sisters in Christ as much as Jesus loves

you? So fruit comes in different

forms. There is fruit of evangelism, of

encouragement, of practical help as service and inviting in.

Christ will give us clues as to what He wants from us.

It will reveal opportunities for fruit to be produced through us.

Jesus didn't seek out people to help.

They often came to Him or he just came across them as he went

about his day. And it's the same for us.

We're told to minister where we are.

We God has put you with the people around you.

If they're unsaved, they need to be saved.

If they're Christians, they need to be encouraged in their walk

and that is the fruit that we can produce.

Christ will use what we have. He will do His work through us

and sometimes that might be just small, sometimes it might be

bigger. It's fruit when it's done in His

strength and for His glory. 1st 2 says that the triumphant life

is not an easy life. In fact, the opposite is often

true. Often it's the time of ease and

comfort in our lives that produces less fruit, and God

wants to produce much fruit in our lives.

So we read this and face #2 every branch that does be a

fruit, he prunes that a beer more fruit.

There's a vine dresser prunes the the the the vine to produce

more fruit and the following season.

So the Father brings us to to produce more fruit in the

following season. He lovingly brings temporary

pain into our lives for long term blessing to produce more

fruit in our lives. And sometimes that pruning is in

the form of cutting sin from our lives.

The Holy Spirit convicts us through the Bible or through His

people through circumstances that our sinful attitudes and

actions must be cut away for fruit to grow.

Sometimes it's just the difficulty and stresses of life.

Now they are a form of provement, pruning from our

loving Father. The pain of losing someone close

to us allows us in the future to comfort others.

Brothers and sisters in Christ who are going through the same

thing. Having to endure physical injury

or poor health equips us to help others who are in the same

situation. Even the heart of our own

failures can sometimes be used by God to produce fruit, helping

others who struggle with the same sin.

We produce more fruit because of the pain and providing pruning.

The true path of following Jesus is called the narrow path, and

it's called that for a reason. That's not a popular or easy

path, but it leads to a triumphant life.

A life that is not reliant on things going well, it's not

reliant on you getting all the things you want.

It's relying on two things that you can never lose and that can

never be taken away from you. Your relationship with Christ

and your purpose in life. Christ is the true Vine, the

sinless Son of God, the great I am.

We have the privilege of being His branches.

So my prayer for you this morning is that you are sure of

your position and the true vine, that you abide with Christ, that

He is the most important relationship in your life, and

that you be a fruit so that your joy might be full.

Let's pray together. Dear Lord, we thank you that we

can have a relationship with you.

We thank you Lord that we can walk with you everyday.

We thank you that we have the privilege of joining you in the

work that you are doing. I pray that you would be with us

this week as we go out into a week.

Pray this is if there's anyone here today who doesn't know you,

who is not in the vine, that today would be this day of

salvation for them. We thank you for all the good

things you've placed us with everyday for the privilege of

calling Jesus a best friend. Help us to abide in the love of

Christ, to produce food, fruit for your glory and your honour.

We thank you Lord, in Jesus name, Amen.