Abide in the True Vine (John 15:1-5) | Elder Michael Ivey | Primitive Baptist Association 2026 - Thursday Night 07/30/2026

Um cap, yeah, yeah, you can have the game there and he just is explaining to be positive uh what is kingdom about.

One of the things that he does uh while is he such uh in contrast to the teachings of the world, uh he says he haters the catholics, the moral of the kingdom.

Um gives a number of those examples of how uh the Jewish culture of the day um showed in conflict with the culture of his kingdom that he become established.

The second completely message that he gives is the all of that discourse, and that uh is recorded in Matthew 24 and 25.

I can't believe that uh the saying of it occurs in Matthew 23 when he pronounced the chapter on Israel, but nevertheless, um again, um he points out how the world is going to interpret what he was about to experience in Calvary and in fact what was really happening.

And one of the things that he pointed out is that the world was going to have all sorts of different theories about when he was coming again, and have all these really convoluted interpretations of scripture to uh you know give substance to their arguments.

And then he finally says, the way that you know that uh it is me who has come again uh is I'm going to come like uh lightning in the skies.

And of course, elsewhere in the scripture it talks about you coming in the clouds.

And if you've ever been in a hill living here in New Street, you have experienced um thunderstorms where the uh clouds are nearer you than the lightning.

The lightning is flashing um uh through the clouds, and of course, what that does is it lights up the clouds from horizon to horizon.

And so what he's saying is the way that you will know that it's me is not by someone telling you, you know, you've got to go to uh this location over here, and I'm gonna be over there, and that's where I'm going to uh uh descend to.

He said the way that you will know it's me is I'm going to occur in an instant at the speed of light, and I'm going to be everywhere present at the same time.

That's how we'll know.

So once again, in the Sermon on the Mount, he's saying the world has all kinds of notions about my kingdom on the hand.

Most of them are wrong.

Most of them are wrong.

Then the third message that uh link um is in the departing message.

And it begins in John chapter 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

And I would like to kind of um just present to you this evening for a few moments kind of an overview of uh at least the first two parts of this message, chapters 14 and 15.

And I want to uh begin by reading uh the uh first verse, which I believe sets the tone for all that follows.

He says, let not your hearts be troubled.

If you believe in God, believe also in me.

Now that's an interesting statement because it obviously um Jesus, who knows, um knows our hearts and certainly knew the frame of mind of the apostles that he was speaking to here, um, that when he said, Let not your hearts be troubled, there's more than an implication there.

He's stating a fact that their hearts were troubled.

And the reason that their hearts were troubled is they still didn't know how to think about Jesus.

Notice he says, ye believe in God, believe also in me.

Now, the struggle that they would have had is that uh the Jewish concept of God didn't make place for a trinity.

They believed in the spirit of God, but they believed the spirit of God was a manifestation or a force that God exercised to convey understanding and to perform extraordinary events in a providential way, um, that those things were done by the spirit of God, but it was God who was exercising his spirit as a force to provide whatever the spirit was supplying at the time.

So the notion that the spirit of God is a person of God was a completely foreign concept to the Jews in that day.

Not only so, the notion that God would have a son was altogether heresy as far as the Jews were concerned.

And I want to put this in a little cultural perspective of how a Jew might have thought about um Jesus being the son of the living God.

Because God's having sons was not foreign to pagan religion in the days of the Jews.

For instance, um Hercules was the son, I believe, of Zeus by a human woman, and Romulus and Remus, who were supposedly the founders of the city nation of Rome, were the sons of Mars, I mean it was perhaps Jupiter, I get those two confused, by uh uh a human woman.

And so when someone would say that the Messiah was going to be the son of God or that Jesus uh is the Messiah and I'm the son of God, what a Jew was associated that with was pagan uh idolatry.

Pagan idolatry.

And indeed, they rejected any notion that uh that Christ was deity.

And here is Christ, who was saying, don't be troubled.

And of course, the reason that um they were troubled in heart is because um he had begun to reveal to them that he was going away.

He was going away.

And they were troubled by that because they had this concept of the kingdom that the Messiah would establish as a physical militant kingdom, um, and that the messiah would rule as David had ruled in Jerusalem.

And so if he was going away, then their hearts were troubled because they didn't, they couldn't figure out how uh this could be the Messiah, he could be the Messiah and rule in his kingdom if he wasn't going to be present to rule in his kingdom.

And so their hearts were troubled by that.

Hearts were troubled by that.

And he said the he said, let not your hearts be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me.

The significance of that statement is this.

He's saying the way that you believe in God, the reverence that you hold God in, the awesomeness that you ascribe to God, the power of God, the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God, all of those things that with Jewish tradition, you come down through the centuries with some understanding of how great God is.

Think of me that way.

Think of me that way.

Now, that would have been tough for a Jew.

That would have been tough for a Jew.

What the Savior is doing here is he is establishing the unity of the Godhead, because a little bit later on down here, he's going to say, and he's going to pray to the Father, and the Father will send the comforter, and then he tells us who the comforter is.

He says, I will come to you.

So he said, the way you think about the Father as God, you think about me, the Son as God, and the way that you think about the comforter who is going to come, you think about me as God.

So he is establishing the unity of the Godhead in three persons, and his purpose in doing that is to establish a continuity in the kingdom.

To establish a continuity.

In other words, he's saying, I have the same power that the Father has.

I have the same power that the Father has.

I have the same power as the Holy Ghost has.

And in as much as the Father has all power and is the ruler of the universe, and yet is not limited to being here on earth, it's really not necessary for me to be here on earth in order for the kingdom to continue.

You see that?

That's a really important point.

Once he establishes that point, he brings the apostles and by extension, disciples, believers, followers of Jesus Christ, he brings us into that continuity.

He brings us into that continuity.

The way he does it is.

If you sin lowfully, there remaineth the more sacrifice for sin.

But a certain fearful expectation of the wrath of God.

And then he says, He that despised Moses' law died without mercy.

How much sore punishment suppose you shall he found worthy who had trampled on his foot?

Christ and counted the blood of the covenant and a little unholy thing.

And has been spiteful, despiteful toward the Holy Ghost.

And there's an example of that in scripture.

You see, a sorer punishment than a sentence of death is to be so miserable that you want to be dead.

And there's an example of that in scripture.

The example is King Saul.

This King Saul.

Who because of his disobedience, when the Lord had told him to engage in war in a certain way and not to leave any survivors, and he allowed the people to plunder and take captives.

And when Samuel came to him and challenged him about that, Saul just kind of blew him off.

And Samuel said, Well, here's the deal.

The Lord has cut you off from being king of Israel.

And your lineage ends with you, so far as we king of Israel are concerned.

And we know how Samuel went into battle, and when he was about to be captured, no doubt would have been tortured or made a spectacle.

All sorts of bad things would happen to him.

He fell on the sword.

And so there is an example of someone that was cut off from the sword and found himself in such a miserable circumstance that death was preferable to living.

Another example in scripture is Ananias and Sapphira.

Ananias and Sapphira.

Who lied to the church, and they pretended they were serving the Lord and at the same time they were lying about their service to the Lord.

So they uh Peter said they lied to the Holy Ghost.

And that was a serious matter with the Lord, and their lives ended.

So how is that different than being purged?

How is that different than being purged?

Well, we know how purging works.

The way purging works is if you have a tree that has a branch that is not healthy or not producing, you cut it off because you don't want nutrition going to that branch if it's not going to produce fruit.

Incidentally, here's something to understand about producing fruit.

There's never been a piece of fruit produced that was produced for the benefit of the vine that produced it.

Think about that.

So that if we are, and see that's that's what Ananias and Sapphira were doing.

They were wanting the praise of other church members for the great sacrifice that they had made by selling their land and giving all the proceeds to the church, and they held some back.

And so if we engage in activity that is for my benefit and not to God's glory, then no fruit is being produced.

Because the fruit that you produce is to God's glory and to the benefit of others.

To the benefit of others.

And that there was no man his equal.

Um, so far as uh you know his piety was concerned, we're uh dealing with evil, we're dealing with evil.

But Job had a problem, and it's a problem that we all suffer from, and part of the problem is that when we have this problem, most of the time we're blind to the fact that we have this problem.

And somehow it has to be brought to our attention.

Job was righteous in his own eyes, is what the scriptures tell us.

He was righteous in his own eyes.

My understanding of that is that Job looked at how the Lord was blessing him and was comparing the blessings that he had from the Lord with the blessings that other people might have from the Lord, and he was taking some credit to himself for the blessings.

He was righteous in his own eyes.

The credit all belonged to the Lord.

It was uh, you know, all of the blessings came from the Lord, they were his to give, they were his to withhold, um, and he did it for his own purpose, not in order for Job to be conceited about it.

But he was righteous in his own eyes.

And the Lord started taking things out of Job's life.

He started purging his life.

Now, the interesting thing about it is that Job maintained his integrity toward God so far as never cursing God, um, never speaking ill of God in any way, um, he maintained his piety toward the Lord, but the Lord kept taking things out of his life.

And it was painful for Job, and he wasn't happy with it.

And he wasn't getting any help from his friends who were miserable comforters.

And finally, when um all the dust had settled, so to speak, the Lord had taken everything out of his life that uh was necessary.

Um all of his friends had come and offered their take on things and given their advice, and none of that had uh given any comfort to Job or changed the circumstance in any way, so that uh you know there was no place to turn to at that point, and that's when the Lord spoke to him.

See, Job had to come to the end of himself.

And coming to the end of himself was also to understand that his friends could not fix this problem for him.

They didn't even understand that they were suffering from the same problem.

And so finally, the Lord had Job's attention.

And that's you know, that's how purging works.

That's how purging works.

The Lord begins to clear things out of our lives that are confusing our discipleship.

And so he began to speak to Job.

And up to that time, Job had had quite a bit to say.

But when the Lord started speaking, Job put his hand over his mouth.

And finally, when the Lord had finished with describing his power and his wisdom.

And no doubt, as he was explaining those things and he said, you know, were you there when I created the heavens and the earth?

Tell me how I did that.

Can you control the Bible?

How did you do that?

And Job, as the Lord revealed more of himself to Job, Job came to see himself as less.

He became to see himself as less.

And finally, he made this confession.

He said, I know you by the hearing of my ear.

But now I see you with my eye.

The point that Job is making there is, you know, his his regard for the Lord in the past had been from a perspective of renown.

God is famous, you know.

I understand my blessings come from him, you know.

But um I don't understand the significance of that.

I don't understand the significance of that.

But he said, now that you've gotten my attention by getting all the things out of my life that I was using to prove what a wonderful person I am.

And it's just me and you, I see myself differently because I now see you and I understand what righteousness is.

In seeing you.

And so he was purged, and of course, we know the rest of that story that um the Lord blessed him abundantly, that you know the fruit of God's blessing abounded in his life.

Another example, this is again gets back to our lesson here.

Another example of purging is Peter.

Is Peter?

We know that Peter needed to be purged because Jesus said, When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.

You know, Peter needed a shift in perspective.

Now art converted, strengthen thy brethren.

Peter is an interesting fellow, and I want you to understand, I'm not, uh I don't intend it to be understood that I am criticizing Peter's sincerity and devotion.

But Peter was conflicted because of his personality, and also because of the culture around him and the influence of the culture around him.

He was conflicted.

And so, on the one hand, he was able to say, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

And in the same setting, in the same continuation of the conversation, when Jesus began to uh say what was going to occur to him, Jesus says that Peter took and shook him.

Can you imagine that?

You know, not so.

You know, think about the implications of that.

Peter is Jesus is saying, I'm going to the cross to die for your sins.

And Peter is saying, no, that's not so.

You know, that does not fit my concept of who the Messiah is.

And of course, we see the influence of Jewish culture on Peter at the Mount of Transfiguration.

Because at the Mount of Transfiguration, when Jesus is conversing with Elijah and Moses, and Peter and John, and I forget who the third one was, James, were allowed to be there and to witness this amazing event.

Peter just couldn't contain himself.

You know, we all know people like that, don't we?

He had to add something to the conversation.

And in doing so, he told us something about the conversion that needed to occur to him.

Because he said, I've got this figured out.

I know what the kingdom is about now.

I have it figured out.

The kingdom is a temple to Jesus, a tabernacle to Jesus, a tabernacle to the prophets, and a tabernacle to the law.

I've got it figured out.

The way the kingdom is going to work is it's going to be equal parts, the traditions of the prophets, and the letter of the law, and the leadership of Jesus Christ, where the traditions of the law concerned.

I've got it all figured out.

The Lord said, Peter, this is the time you should be listening rather than talking.

He said, This is my beloved son.

Hear ye him.

So Peter had this concept of the kingdom that was out of sync with what the kingdom actually is.

And the Lord gives him a pretty good hint there that the kingdom is about my son.

You just need to be listening to him.

The traditions of the prophets and the details of the law will all be taken care of in him.

In him.

So just listen to him.

And so when Jesus starts talking about being crucified, Peter can't fit that into his model of the kingdom.

He can't make it work.

And so Jesus, shortly after that, is now speaking to his apostles, and he says, Let not your hearts be troubled.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in you.

He said, I'll send a comforter, and the comforter that I'm going to send you is me.

I will come to you.

He's saying, everything that you understand about God applies to Christ and applies to the Holy Spirit.

And everything you understand about Christ applies to God and the Holy Spirit.

And everything you understand about the Holy Spirit applies to God and applies to Christ.

Now they have their separate office works, but in essence, they are one.

There are three persons in one.

Someone was last week, Cindy Texan asked me if I would explain that, if I would explain the Trinity.

I wrote back and said no.

I can't explain it.

I can believe it, but I can't explain it.

Because there's nothing in human experience that you know that we can compare it to.

I can make my abode with you.

But in order for me to make my abode in you, you have to be producing fruit.

Because I'm divine, and that's what I do.

I produce fruit in the branches.

And the way you produce fruit is by loving me and keeping my commandments.

And keeping my commandments.

So that notion conveys all sorts of ideas of what it means for the Lord to take his abode with us and we to abide in him.

But he gives us ways of, even though we can't understand exactly how that occurs, he gives us ways of understanding that it is occurring.

That it is occurring.

And he tells us what we must do in order for it to occur.

And what we must do is love him and keep his commandments.

That's what you do in order for the Lord to abide in you, and you abide in the Lord, in an experiential sense.

That Jesus is talking about because he's talking about functioning as disciples in the kingdom.

The way that we can know that is that we have joy.

Because he said that he would give us joy, and that our joy would be full if we abide in him.

And we mentioned to you what we what he meant by joy being full.

But there is a uh there is a happy disposition that the child of God has when he's serving the Lord because the Lord is proving.

And so there is a happy perspective.

Even if you're struggling, it's still there.

Even if you're struggling, it's still there.

And the other thing is that it will give you a peaceful perspective.

It will give you a peaceful demeanor.

You're not going to go around angry all the time.

You're not going to go around frustrated all the time.

You're not going to engage in rogue rage, for instance, because if you're engaging in road rage, you're certainly not joyful and you're certainly not experiencing peace.

And in serving the Lord, you have joy from the perspective of pleasing God and God being glorified and him conveying glorious joy to you.

And that will make you content.

It will give you contentment that is untouchable by what's going on around you.

So this evening, I would like for you to think about this because the downside of this, you know, we're going to go through some purging because we all have issues that we struggle with.

We all have sin issues that we struggle with.

And so there's going to be purging so that we can eliminate the sin issues, and that will give us another area of our lives where we can produce fruit.

And it's better to go through that kind of purging than to cut off.

The scary part of this is the third example of cutting off.

The third example of cutting off is Israel.

It's Israel.

And it's Israel in Matthew 23.

And it's those people who exist today who trace their lineage back to those Jews in that day and who live in that Jewish culture today.

It's those folks too.

They're still cut off.

Now I want to ask yourself, ask yourself this.

Where would you feel more safe?

Here in the United States of America or living over in the Gospel.

That's a no-brainer question.

Okay.

My point is that when the Lord cut them off, he left them to the description that the apostle uh that Jesus gives us here, and I'll I'll uh uh end with this.

He says, he says in chapter 15 that when they're cut off, um that they're thrown out, and men gather them up and cast them into the fire.

Cast them into the fire.

That's what's been going on with Israel and with the Jewish people for the last 2,000 years.

They've been repeatedly cast in fire.

That's how terrible the cutting off can be.

And we all stand in jeopardy of that.

And the only way that we can avoid that is by producing fruit.

And we produce fruit by abiding in Christ who is divine.

And we abide in Christ by loving and keeping his commandments.

God bless you, we think.