Abide in Me (John 15:1-11)

And our final reading is from the Gospel of John, chapter 15, verses 1 to 11.

John 15:1–11

John 15, 1 to 11.

I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Abide in me, and I in you.

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, and apart from me, you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

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

Abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

And now, friends, let's pray.

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding.

Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, in you we live and we move and we have our being.

Lord, we pray that your word would give us life, that you would renew us, that Lord, your life would be in us, and Lord, that we would bear much fruit and so prove to be your disciples.

Lord, give us joy as we do that.

You want our joy to be made full.

So, Lord, we pray that we would receive good news today.

In Jesus' name, we pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, friends, at this point you might want to put yourself into speaker view here, but uh you're welcome to uh you're welcome to do whatever you'd like.

So we find ourselves in in uh John chapter 15 today.

John 15 · chapter mention

John has written his gospel, not just as a simple biography of Jesus, but he wants us to uh put our faith in Jesus.

He says that he's written these things about Jesus so that we may believe in him and in believing in him have life in his name.

That's John's purpose for his gospel.

And John sets up his gospel with seven very important I am statements.

Last week we talked about the sixth of seven I am statements.

We talked about Jesus who is, who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And now we come to something of a climax.

We come to the seventh of seven I am statements, and here we see Jesus saying, I am the true vine.

See, it's at this moment, as the disciples are celebrating the Last Supper together, as the disciples are gathered together around this Passover feast, as the disciples are faced with fear, confusion about Jesus' imminent departure, it's at this moment when things seem most frightening and confusing that Jesus wants to show them a final picture of who he is and an invitation to his disciples to abide in him.

So, what's the deal with abiding in Jesus?

What's that about?

What can we expect when we abide in Jesus?

I suspect that abiding is very important because here we have Jesus in his final word to his disciples, giving us final picture and invitation to them abide in me.

What does that mean for us?

It's a big deal.

Here's what I think we can expect based on what Jesus is saying, based on our gospel text this morning.

Here's three things I want to suggest that we can expect if we abide in him.

If we take seriously this picture of him as the true vine and we as the branches, here's what I think we can expect when we abide in Jesus.

We can expect pruning, we can expect fruit, and finally we can expect joy with obedience.

Pruning, fruit, joy with obedience.

So let's dive into our passage this morning.

So a little bit of background uh to begin.

John's not just, or Jesus isn't just pulling out this image of a vine out of nowhere, but he's drawing on a very important symbol for his disciples.

We all have national symbols, right?

We see a symbol and it brings us right to the spirit or heart of a particular country or people group.

To this day, when I see a bald eagle, I think about our neighbors to the south.

I think about the United States of America, because there's something about the majesty of a bald eagle that speaks to the soaring and noble spirit of an American, right?

I spent seven years in America and I love America very much.

But there's something about the eagle that speaks to the spirit of what it means to be an American.

And of course, uh on the Welsh flag, you'll see another symbol, you'll see a dragon.

Because of all countries, you don't want to mess with whales, right?

And here in Canada, of course, we have a number of national symbols.

On our flag, we proudly display a maple leaf.

And if that's not fierce enough, we have symbols like the beaver or the moose that communicate something of the Canadian spirit.

We see these symbols, and our minds and our hearts are drawn to something about what it means to be a Canadian.

Well, if you're uh if if you're Jewish and living in first century Palestine, if you're among the people of Israel, if you see a vine, your imagination and heart has been captured.

It's a national symbol.

It represents something of the important and vital relationship that you share with Yahweh, with the Lord.

And so uh if if you were living in first century Palestine, if you go to the temple, if you were going into worship, you'd enter through the main gate, and over that main gate, you'd see an enormous golden sculpture of a vine.

It represents something of what it means to be vitally connected in worship to the Lord.

And that's not all we see throughout the Old Testament, we see a consistent description or a consistent metaphor as Israel as God's vine.

Especially we see it in places like Psalm 80 or in Isaiah 5.

And let me read just a little bit of uh of Isaiah 5 here.

Here the prophet is singing a song regarding the Lord's vineyard.

Uh, the prophet says this, that the Lord looked for it, this vineyard, to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

He goes on in in verse 7, Isaiah 5, 7, he goes on to say, For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting.

That is to say, the people of God and the vine, where there's there's a vital connection, there's a symbolism, it captures the imagination there.

That's what it's part of what it means to be God's people.

But here's what God sees when he looks into this vineyard, verse Isaiah 5, 7.

The Lord looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, an outcry.

See, the Lord has planted this vineyard to grow and bear much fruit, to flourish and to bring forth life.

But when the Lord looks at his wild and ingrown vineyard, he doesn't see flourishing, he doesn't see life, he sees a vineyard that's gone off the tracks, he sees a vineyard that's become ingrown, he sees a vineyard that's become diseased, he sees a vineyard that's decaying.

And so uh we see that Isaiah or Israel, as the vineyard of the Lord, did not bear the fruit that the Lord had intended.

And so, in the midst of this context, here's Jesus showing up and in his final word to his disciples saying, I am the true vine.

Maybe we can see what his disciples would have seen in these words.

Where Israel has failed to bear fruit, I'm going to bear good fruit.

Where Israel has failed in its purpose to flourish and to proclaim salvation to all nations, I'm going to cause God's people to flourish and to proclaim that salvation.

Where God's purpose for Israel, where Israel has failed in God's purpose, I am going to succeed.

I am the true vine.

If you want to know what the nation of Israel, what God intended for Israel, and what that was all about, you have only to look at me to see the true Israel.

Jesus is the culmination and the fulfillment of the story of Israel.

And so Jesus invites us to be his branches.

He invites his disciples to be the branches in the true vine.

And as I mentioned, as branches, we can expect to see these three things.

We can expect to see some pruning.

Let's look at verses one to three.

Now, um I'll I guess I'll say this to start.

So when I was young, my family uh we decided we wanted to plant some vines.

We had a lovely red brick house growing up in my house in Ottawa, but it wasn't anything particularly special.

We thought what would really make it pop is some greenery.

And so we planted some vines and we put up some lattice work.

We thought this is really going to make things pop.

But we quickly learned that vines get out of control and they get out of control fast.

These vines overtook the front of our house.

They started to go right into our entryway.

And of course, we realized that these are so unmanageable to try and get a hold of.

And very quickly, we found these vines that grew unmanageable and out of control started growing back into themselves, and they started to decay and they started to grow wooden and lifeless.

See, we quickly realize that vines are a lot of work.

Vines require a lot of a gardening hand and they'll go out of control so quickly without any kind of pruning.

So Jesus wants us to catch a bit of the situation here in verses one to three.

He wants us to know that on our own, left to ourselves, left to their own, vines will not flourish.

They'll either produce low-quality fruit or they'll grow back into themselves.

They'll get sick, they'll get infested, and they'll die.

Vines to truly flourish, to truly come to the fullness of life, they need a gardening hand.

And so Jesus invites us to understand that we as disciples need a gardening hand and that the Father is our vine dresser.

In Greek, the word that's used here is kind of a general word for farmer or gardener.

And this is a role that God has been playing since the very beginning of Genesis.

We remember God creates this creation, this good creation, and in the middle of it, he plants a garden where he sets man and woman to cultivate this garden.

God has been a uh the father has been a gardening hand in creation since the very beginning, and his desire is to see his creation flourish and produce abundance of life.

And we can see that the father is very personally involved in the cultivation and care of this creation.

He tends to and cares for the life of the vine.

His hands are on each of the branches.

So the father is not a distant God who's uninvolved with his creation, but he's very personally involved.

He's very invested in the life and the flourishing of each and every branch.

That's why we see the father taking two actions in our passage today.

The first action he takes is against those branches that don't bear any fruit.

We see him taking those branches away, or the Greek might say is clearing those branches out.

He gathers those branches, we see in verses six and seven, and burns them, which maybe gives us a little bit of a preview of what we understand to be the final judgment.

Maybe that plugs into some of the imagery we see in places like Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

For those that do not flourish, that don't choose life in the Lord, there are dire consequences.

And yes, I think this does serve as something of a warning to the disciples who are hearing this.

But that's the first action the Lord takes.

He takes away those lifeless branches, but the Lord prunes those branches that do bear fruit.

He prunes them so that they flourish, so that they bear even better fruit, even higher quality, higher yield, that they grow into the fullness of what it means to be a vine.

So the first thing we can notice is that no branch is left untouched, right?

It's not that some branches get cleared away and the other branches are kind of left to their own thing.

Each and every branch has been handled and cut by the vine dresser.

They've been cared for by the Heavenly Father, who has the best interest of the vines in mind, by the way, right?

He's not just indiscriminately taking away vines.

He's got the branches, he's got the best interest for the overall health of the vine and its branches in mind.

And that is why he makes the careful vine dressing that he does.

See, friends, we can expect pruning, even for us who are bearing fruit, even of us who are abiding in the vine, we can expect the hand of the Father to be pruning us.

Sometimes that looks like challenging words.

Sometimes that looks like difficult life circumstances.

I think so.

But I do think that Jesus points us towards the primary blade that the vine dresser uses.

Verse 3, Jesus says this.

He says this to his disciples, already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

And again, this word clean is closely related in the Greek to this word for prune.

The father clears and the father cleans.

And he does this by the word.

And so, friends, if we want to flourish, if we want to know what it means to experience fullness of life as branches in the vine, we need to be cleared and cleaned by the word.

We need to engage with the word.

So the the challenge for me becomes how how often and with what degree am I engaging with the Lord in his word?

How often am I coming to scripture with an open heart, ready to be cleansed and cleared by what he has to say to me?

Because the Bible is a very challenging book.

Um, I read a quote by Tim Keller, in fact, I I reposted it on our news song page, that the Bible has to challenge some of our preconceptions about who God is for us to have a personal relationship with him.

We're going to have to be cleansed and cleared by the word of the Lord.

And we do that as we engage prayerfully and we yield our spirit and our will to what we encounter in Scripture.

Now, we need to set aside time and be disciples of scripture.

We need to meditate.

We need to be nourished.

We need to be cleansed and cleared.

There are so many opportunities, I think it's really remarkable in this digital age we live in.

Here we all are gathered together in Zoom.

There's so many wonderful opportunities to gather together around the Word, personally and in community.

There are wonderful Bible apps like UVersion or other things that can get us engaged on reading through the Bible in one year or audio Bibles that can take us through that.

I'm really convicted that in the 21st century digital moment we live in, there's really not much of an excuse for us as disciples, us who abide in the true vine, to not be going through the Bible or at least the greater part of the Bible in at least a year.

We need to be soaking up the word.

I think that's doable.

I don't think that that's a crazy thing.

I think that we need to soak up the word and be cleansed and cleared so that we can have fullness of life.

I think that's part of what it looks like to be pruned by the word.

So if we're not feeling particularly spiritually vital at the moment, maybe we need to consider what kind of time we spend in the word.

We need to consider the kind of engagement we have.

And then maybe we need to put into practice some of those spiritual disciplines that help to cleanse and clear those negative spiritual habits or attitudes that we have.

Maybe they're habits like prayer, daily prayer.

Maybe it's habits like silence or solitude or service or community or worship, those things that curve us out of ourselves, curve these vines of mind that tend to grow in on themselves and curve them outwards so that they can provide life and flourish in as they abide in the vine.

So, friends, let's let's engage with the word.

Let's expect cleansing and clearing.

Let's expect to be pruned for our own good by the vine dresser.

That's the first thing we can expect.

We can expect pruning through the word.

And the second thing we can expect as branches is we can expect fruit.

The phrase that comes to mind is, you know, I'm not much of an artist, I'm not much of a musician.

I'll strum a guitar a little bit and pretend like I can sing.

But uh but my wife is the real musician.

The remarkable things about musicians, artists, is they seem to be just so drawn to what they do.

I've even heard artists say that like I need to paint, I need to sculpt, I need to make music.

That's that's just part of who I am.

Because if you're an artist, you're going to make art, right?

If you're a musician, you're going to make music.

That's what that's what you're going to do.

That's just that's how you're wired.

If you are a branch, you're going to bear fruit.

It's not just some branches, it's not just the elite branches that bear fruit.

That's just part of what it means to be a branch.

A branch bears fruit.

Jesus invites us, verse 4, 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.

Abiding in Jesus means we will inevitably, the outcome will be that we bear fruit if we abide in him, if we remain, if we stay, if we continue, if we dwell, if we endure, if we live in the life of the true vine.

What does abiding look like?

I think some of those words capture a little bit what it looks like.

But I think abide, sometimes it's suggested, I think abiding is inner peace or it's serenity.

It's a, it's, it's an inner feeling.

And I think sometimes that can be true.

Sometimes we experience a considerable peace in our relationship and in our life with the Lord, sometimes, but I don't think that's always the case.

Sometimes it's it's suggested that um abiding with Jesus looks like fellowship.

It looks like um, it looks like joining our life with Him.

And I think that that's true, yes.

And even more than that, I think it looks like having true spiritual union with Jesus, which I would suggest is the very essence of our salvation.

It is being in Christ, who is our hope and glory.

It is this intimate, vital spiritual union that we as branches share with the true vine, from whom we derive our very life.

So one of my favorite theologians, John Calvin, he writes this.

He says, um, he writes about the intimate relationship we share with Christ.

He says that Christ shares with us what he has received from the Father, and he has shared this to become ours and to dwell with us.

We in turn are said to be engrafted in him and put on Christ.

For as I have said, John Calvin says, all that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.

See, Jesus invites us into the very life and love of the Father, as we see in the verses that follow.

Jesus invites us to yield ourselves, our own independence, our own self-sufficiencies into him and derive our life from him and experience a full, spiritually vital life.

That doesn't always look like inner peace.

Sometimes that can be anxiety too, but regardless of how we feel, the reality is we are grafted into that branch.

We are secure and we are cared for by the compassionate hand of the vine dresser of our heavenly Father.

Our union with Christ is what makes us Christians.

His righteousness is what we now share as branches in his vine.

His goodness as the vine is what we now share as his branches.

What he is, we share by his grace.

And that is the vital connection, the the life-giving connection that we share as branches in his vine.

I am the vine, Jesus says in verse 5.

You are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

And apart from me, you can do nothing.

Because a branch can't do anything once it's separated from the vine, right?

The life it has, the fruit it bears, all of that comes from the life of the vine.

And notice too that Jesus doesn't even clarify what he means by fruit, he kind of just leaves that out there.

He's uses this word fruit, and he seems to just have this idea that his disciples know what he's talking about.

He never says specifically, this is the kind of fruit that you can expect.

Now, maybe from passages like Isaiah 5, we can think that's justice, that's righteousness.

But I want to suggest this that Jesus leaves fruit as something that's sort of open-ended because he wants to invite us into a holistic view of our spiritual life.

The fruit that we bear is the product of a whole life that is lived in the life of the true vine.

Everything that grows out of us, so far as we are deriving our life from the vine, so far as we are yielding ourselves to the life that the vine wants to give us, the fruit that we produce, that will be the fruit that we produce.

It's not self-generated fruit, right?

Because branches can't do anything apart from the vine.

John goes on in his first epistle, he writes this By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his spirit.

The spirit is the source of our union with Christ.

The Spirit is the one who works in us that goodness and that life that the Lord wants to share with us.

And we also can consider how the earliest Christians, how Paul talks about the fruit and what kind of fruit we can expect to see.

He describes the fruit of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

You'll notice, by the way, that that's fruit singular.

That's not fruits of the spirit as though they're different things.

This is the holistic outcome of a life lived, grafted into Jesus.

We're going to become more and more like Jesus, our Lord, the more and more we yield ourselves to his life, to the true life in the vine.

We become more and more like Christ as we give ourselves to Christ.

So when I think about what this means for us, when I think about here's how we put this into practice as Christians, it's very tempting for me to say, so go be kinder, right?

So go be nicer, so go be better Christians, right?

It's very tempting to say, go produce that fruit.

But I think that would be short-sighted.

I think that would be misleading.

And here's why I think that.

I think that that would be me saying to us branches, you know, go try harder on your own.

Go generate that fruit that you want to see on your own.

We know that branches don't generate anything on their own.

The life that they produce comes from the life of the vine.

So if we want to see that kind of fruit, if we want to see that kind of formation happen in our life, it's not about going and trying really hard this week, harder this week than we tried last week.

It's about yielding ourselves more and more to the life that Jesus wants us to have in him, the true vine, yielding ourselves more and more to the vine dresser's careful pruning.

It's yielding ourselves more and more to his life and to his leading and seeing that fruit become produced through our giving ourselves over to the life of the vine.

I think we do that in prayer.

I think we do that when we go to the Lord and we share our heart and we get real honest and we share our concerns and we share our praises and we share our thanksgivings and we we ask for those things that uh for ourselves and for others.

When we go to the Lord and we just open up our hearts to him, it's though we're opening up our branch to the life of the vine more and more.

I also think that we do that through community because no branch is on its own, is it?

We all of us branches share a life together in the one vine.

We all of us need to gather in the best way that we can.

That's why we're doing Zoom right now, isn't it?

We need to gather together as branches, sharing the life of the vine together, to be formed together, to be inspired by one another, to inspire one another to good works, as the author of Hebrews says, to bear more and more fruit, because the Christian life is not led in solitary confinement, is it?

It's led together, it's a life together.

As image bearers, we grow more and more like God when we love each other, when we love those who God loves.

So what can we expect?

Branches who abide in the true vine.

What can we expect?

We can expect pruning and we can expect pruning by God's word, and we can expect fruit because that's that's the purpose of being a branch.

We can expect that fruit as we yield ourselves to the life and leading of the vine.

Now, the final thing I think we can expect is joy with obedience.

And I and I couple those two words together quite intentionally.

So when I read verse 9 and 10, let me read verse 9 and 10 real quick.

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

Jesus says, abide, remain, stay, yield yourself 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.

See, when I read that, I get an immediate concern.

Something jumps out at me.

Maybe it jumps out at you too.

I read that and I go, gosh, I did not do a good job keeping God's commandments this week.

Did I did I just jeopardize the love of the Father?

Did I just put myself beyond that love of the Father?

And am I in danger of being one of those branches that's going to get gathered away and tossed into the fire?

Well, it's a little bit like a conversation I remember having with my mom when I was very, very young.

I was, I forget how old I was, but I was just at an age where I'm starting to get a little conscious of myself and just starting to realize that not everyone shares the same kind of life situation that I have, and not everyone shares the same loving relationship that I share with my mom.

Not everyone shares that with their parents.

And so I said to my mom, um, I was very young, I said, Mom, would do you love me no matter what?

I wanted to know that reassurance of my mom.

Maybe you had a similar conversation with your parents at one point.

Mama, would you love me no matter what?

My mom says, of course I do.

Of course I love you no matter what.

And then I asked her the the worst circumstance I could think of.

I said, Mom, and this is the worst thing I could think of, would you love me if I go to jail?

Right?

Because that's that's the bad, that's the worst place I could think of.

That's where Batman sends the bad guys, right?

He sends them to jail.

That's the worst place I could think of is being, you know, in the same place as penguin or something.

But um, but my mom, I'll uh, you know, to this day, of course, this this reply still sticks with me.

She goes, of course I'd still love you, even if you go to jail.

She said this.

That might make things more difficult for us.

It might make our relationship harder, but of course I'll still love you.

I'll love you no matter what.

See, I think our father's love is just like that.

It is an unconditional love.

The father, the vine dresser, never stops loving and caring for the branches.

See, the father loves you no matter what.

His love is unconditional, and the father invites you to enjoy the fullness of that love in the context of obedience.

Because when we disobey, when we turn away, when we go into a far country like the prodigal son, we do we strain that relationship, don't we?

We don't, we don't invalidate it.

We're no, we're not unloved by the Father.

It does become a it becomes more challenging, right?

And we have to turn around and repent.

We have to turn back to the Lord and once again enjoy the fullness of that love that our Heavenly Father aches for us to enjoy in the context of obedience.

And that's that's the challenging thing, isn't it?

Because I suspect that our current cultural narrative is that joy and obedience are two very different things.

That if I'm gonna have fullness of joy, if I'm gonna be fully satisfied, then I'm gonna be fully uh individualized.

I'm gonna be fully self-sufficient, I'm gonna be fully self-determining, I'm not gonna be hunkered down or or I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna have to obey anything else other than my own self-will.

And friends, I think Jesus is seeing a inviting us to see a better way, a truer freedom than freedom of self-will, so-called freedom of self-will.

I think Jesus is calling us to enjoy the freedom and fullness of obedience.

See, I think it's a little bit like this.

Uh, you know, it's it's a little bit like the freedom of a music, it's the freedom that a musician, um, uh that a musician enjoys uh at their instruments.

See, Jonathan is an example of someone who has perfect freedom and joy at a piano.

He has a freedom and enjoy and a joy at the piano that I simply do not experience because I never really sat down to do my scales.

I never really sat down and and you know, and I didn't take too seriously the instruction that my very kind-hearted teacher has tried to offer.

I never submitted myself to that kind of instruction.

I never submitted myself to the same kind of discipline.

But because Jonathan and musicians like him, our worship band like him, has submitted themselves to similar kinds of instructions and put that through in obedience, they enjoy a freedom to play their instrument that I simply don't.

When we yield ourselves to that kind of instruction, when we follow the way of obedience, we find a fuller, a truer, a more joyful way to experience that freedom.

And I think Jesus is inviting us to a similar kind of joy, a similar kind of freedom in him.

It's a freedom that comes as we yield ourselves to him, not by pushing and fighting against everything, by will by yielding our will, or at least being willing to yield our will over to him.

The more we obey, the more we enjoy the Father's love for us in that proper context of obedience.

We discover the fullness of life as we give ourselves over to the life of the vine and we follow through with our obedience.

To enjoy this freedom, we have to know what God commands us.

These things I've spoken to you, God, our Jesus says, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

See, the Father, the vine dresser, is not interested in making our lives miserable, is he?

He's not interested in making our lives morose or sorrowful.

It's this the Christian life is a joyful life.

It's not the same thing as happiness, mind you.

We can be very sad and be very joyful at the same time.

I think that our Heavenly Father invites us, Jesus invites us to experience a life of joy, of true satisfaction in him.

And I think that that's the kind of joy that Paul captures in Romans chapter 8 when he says that I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither present nor future, nor uh angel, nor height nor depth, nor anything at all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

See, friends, true joy comes from being satisfied, completed in Jesus.

True joy comes from a complete yielding of self to him and being cleared and cleansed by his word, to being cared for by our vine dresser.

True joy comes from being satisfied in Christ.

And I love how John Piper puts it.

He says, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Friends, Jesus is inviting us to discover true joy, not a joy of self-determination, but a joy of self-yielding to ourselves to him and to his good and pleasing will for us.

It's a kind of joy that uh Julian of Norwich, who's uh uh an Anglican, um uh an Anglican writer um from centuries past, has a she has a wonderful prayer that goes like this.

She prays, O God of your goodness, give me yourself, for you are enough for me.

I can ask nothing less that is completely to your honor.

And if I do ask anything less, I shall always be in want.

Only in you have I all.

See, Julian of Norwich understood what Jesus is trying to communicate to us here.

We will only discover true joy through being satisfied in God, and we will only be satisfied in God as we give ourselves completely over to Him and to His leading.

And friends, I think this is where the cross comes into view, because here we see the Son who is perfectly yielding himself to his Father's will, even to the point of death.

The Son who, for the joy set before him, writes the author of Hebrews, endured the cross.

See, on our own, apart from grace, we are all decaying branches.

We are all dead wood.

We have no life in ourselves.

We have not borne the fruit of true justice or righteousness.

We've curved back into ourselves in our own self-interests and self-will.

But for our sake on the cross, Jesus was hanged on the dead wood of that tree.

Out of his love, the true vine took our disease and took our decay, he took our sin into himself and endured the deepest cut of the vine dresser's knife.

The f the son was forsaken by the Father, and bearing our sin, cast it away.

Peter writes this in our epistle reading this morning.

He says, Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.

See, on the third day, the true vine rises again to a new, imperishable and glorious life, free from the power, disease, and decay of sin.

And now the vine offers us new life, uh, new life to the and to us, our once dead branches, that as we yield ourselves to the life of this vine, as we put our trust in Jesus, as we give over to ourselves to his leading, we will be revitalized by his new resurrection life.

His life flows through us by the Holy Spirit who grafts us, who unites us into himself.

And then we bear fruit, not through trying really hard, but by giving ourselves more and more over to this life and joy of the vine through obedience.

So, friends, what can we expect as branches in this true vine?

We can expect pruning.

That is not a pleasant process, is it?

That is not something that we look forward to, but it is something that our Father, the good vine dresser, does for our good.

He cleanses and clears us by the word so that we can have fullness of life and bear fruit.

We can expect fruit.

That's why we exist, that's why branches exist.

We can expect to bring that fruit into the world, the fruit of a holistic, whole life lived for the Lord, and we can expect joy with obedience.

We can expect the fullness, the vitality of joy, of life lived with the Lord, the very purpose of our being in Him as we give ourselves over and enjoy this love in the context of following His lead in obedience.

So, friends, what might submitting yourself to the life of this vine look like today?

What is Creighton holding back?

What is Creighton afraid to let go of?

What is Creighton afraid that'll get pruned away today?

And am I willing to let that go, knowing that I will experience more of the joy and flourishing that my heavenly father, that the vine dresser, intends for me?

How can submitting yourself to the vine dresser lead to greater joy, to greater life today?

Amen.