Life in the Vine - Myles Holmes | Feb 15, 2026

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

You can take your copy of God's Word and turn it to John 15.

If you don't have a copy of God's word this morning, you're gonna need one, so you can flag down one of our ushers who are coming down the aisle, so they get a copy into your hand, which you can keep as our gift to you.

For years in our home, we had a cherished vine.

Now I don't know, I'm sure there is some sort of technical name for that plant, but that's what it looked like to me.

It had grown over a meter long.

It overflowed with life.

And I'm told that this vine was years old, and then something dreadful happened.

We moved it.

Now we didn't move the vine outside into the cold where it would be killed by the cold.

We didn't move it somewhere dangerous in our house, like that would be in the hand's arm's reach of a toddler's scissors or something like that.

We moved this vine into a forgotten corner of our house, and it was there that slowly over time the soil dried up.

There was no dramatic moment, there was no sudden collapse, but when we found the vine, it was too late.

It had been disconnected from a life-giving source for too long, for so long that even when I took a picture with ChatGPT, it was hopeless.

There was no return.

As alive as it looked, as many leaves as were reaching, as long as it was, as much green as there was, the roots were dead.

Reminds of this of this reality in gardening that once a plant stops drawing life, it is as good as dead.

It's no longer connected to the source of life.

Loved one, what is true of gardening is true of us spiritually.

Jesus wants us to understand this in John 15 that for most of us, spiritual dryness, spiritual death, it doesn't happen overnight.

That can happen.

Some sort of catastrophic sin, maybe a prolonged season of suffering.

That can take Christians away from their faith, but but so often, in fact, we could maybe say more often, we just dry out over time.

A prayer life that was once vibrant becomes shallow.

Joy that was once natural is forced.

Obedience becomes mechanical, sort of showing up, going through the motions.

As Christians, we're very aware of this reality, aren't we?

That on the outside we can look alive, we can show up to church, we can we can even sing the songs.

We can still look green, but the question underneath all of this is the question that Jesus is gonna ask us this morning through his word.

Where are you drawing your life from?

Loved one, where are you drawing your life from?

When life stops flowing from the source, nothing on the outside can compensate.

Jesus wants to use this same image this morning in John 15 to press home this important reality, perhaps best summarized in verse 5 of chapter 15, that apart from Jesus, you can do nothing, Jesus says.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

Not just that apart from Jesus, we have less life, not just that our life is a little bit weaker, not as good.

Jesus says there is no life.

No life unless the roots of your life will be connected to him, unless you will abide in him.

That's the truth that will shape everything we see in this passage this morning.

I want you to understand this that spiritual life flows from abiding in Christ.

Spiritual life flows from abiding in Christ.

It can come no other way.

It must come through abiding.

And so this morning, as I open up God's word, I'm filled with a sense of expectation that in this room, if there are those who see God's word, are convicted by the Holy Spirit, who make a decision, I am gonna plant the roots of my life deep into the source of life that is Jesus Christ.

Love when there is so much hope for you.

I want you to see it in the text with me.

And so let's read it together this morning.

Would you stand with me as we read God's word?

John 15, verses 1 to 11.

John 15:1–11

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, for apart from me you can do nothing.

If any one 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab a seat.

There's life to be found this morning.

There's life to be found in the vine that is Jesus Christ.

And Jesus wants you to know that he is the vine, and that we can find life in him in four ways.

The first way is this when we receive his life.

When we receive his life.

Loved one, you just saw it in God's word.

Jesus is crystal clear that life does not come from our effort.

It must come from a connection to the source of life that is Jesus.

He is the vine.

We are the branches.

Now, just like the plant in our home didn't die because it was attacked or because it was defective, it died because it was disconnected from a source of life.

We, as believers, we wither when we ignore this simple foundational truth that life, loved one, life comes from the vine.

Do you see it there in verse one?

Look at verse one again with me.

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

Now, for the disciples, for anyone steeped in the Old Testament, this image of a vine is not new.

It was one of the most frequent symbols used throughout the Old Testament, but I want you to understand that as the disciples heard this illustration of a vine, it was not a comforting thing.

It's almost like how clowns are for some of you.

Perhaps we talk about clowns, it's an incredibly scary thing.

You're afraid of clowns.

You're supposed to be happy, but some sort of childhood trauma brings up this great fear.

And now, as this image of a vine is brought up, it's not comforting, it's tragic.

We see the vine come up through scripture.

In Isaiah 5, God looks for fruit in Israel that is like a vineyard, but instead of finding fruit, he only finds wild grapes.

In Ezekiel 15, the vine is called useless, fit for only burning.

There is a memory that is attached to the image of Israel, God's people, as a vine.

In fact, in Ezekiel 15, if you were to turn there and you had an ESV Bible, I love what the ESV editors have titled that section.

They titled it Jerusalem, a useless vine.

It's blunt, isn't it?

A useless vine.

And yet I wonder if you've ever felt that that's a fitting subtitle for your life.

Maybe you look at your life and you cannot help but to think that it's been fruitless, that it's been inconsistent.

Sure, it's had the appearance of fruit, but it's had little substance, and maybe that's even more personal for you.

Maybe, maybe it's not Jerusalem, a useless vine.

Maybe it's, you know, Miles, a useless vine.

We feel the weight of our insufficiency.

We have tried to produce fruit.

We have wanted and desired to produce fruit for God and failed.

And that is exactly why what Jesus says here is so staggering.

When after thousands of years of the failure of God's people, when God was looking for fruit in the vine, Jesus appears and says to his disciples, I am the vine.

Where the old vine produced bad fruit, Jesus says, I will produce real fruit.

Where judgment should come because the vine is useless and fit for nothing but burning, Jesus comes and says, I will produce life in you.

I am the true vine.

Now, the old covenant, it exposed something painful.

It exposed something painful that's in us.

That we often try to find life by our performance, don't we?

By our obedience, by our adherence to the law.

And the whole system of the old covenant and the law that was given to Moses showed us what obedience should be like.

But when the New Testament authors come, they say the law was good because you know what it showed us?

We can't do it.

It was humbling, it was a standard we could not live up to.

Whenever God came looking for fruit from Israel, the answer was always the same.

They could not do it on their own.

Now Jesus comes to God's people this morning and he says, You want life, you want fruit, you want God to search your life and find that there's fruit there.

He says, Life is found in connection to me.

I am divine.

Spiritual life is found in abiding in Christ.

But but how then does it come?

Let's not leave this thought of abiding in sort of this mystical area.

How does abiding happen in your life?

Well, notice verse two, loved one.

Notice this.

Every branch in me, would you take your pencil and your copy of God's word and circle that word in me?

Every branch in me, Jesus says.

Loaded with important theology about how to abide in me, Jesus says.

When Jesus calls us to abide, he's not calling us to sort of manufacture this closeness to him.

He is calling us to a spiritual reality.

The branches in the vine, Jesus says.

The vine is in the branch.

This is what the Bible calls union with Christ.

It is a theology of the union with Christ.

And Jesus has already actually spoken about it.

It was only a chapter ago.

For us, it was many weeks ago in John 14, verse 20, when Jesus describes the Christian life.

John 14:20

Look what he says.

He says, you in me and I in you.

You want to know what it means to be a Christian.

Jesus says, it is you in me, and I in you.

And so let's put up a simple definition on the screen.

Union with Christ is this.

By the Holy Spirit, we are joined to the risen Christ through faith, so that all He is and all He has accomplished becomes ours.

That is what it means to be in me.

Now, if you can sit here and read that and your heart is unaffected by this awe in light of what God has done for you.

I just want you to take a minute, take a deep breath.

If you have a coffee, maybe drink some coffee, slap yourself in the face a few times, because this truth is astounding, okay?

Don't let it uh kind of wash over you while you think about what's for lunch today or you think about work coming up this week, because nothing is more eternally amazing than this.

That by the Holy Spirit we are joined to the risen Christ through faith, so that all he has, that is Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, and all he has accomplished becomes ours.

That is union with Christ.

And you know what's fascinating about the New Testament is that when Paul reaches for a description of what it means to be a Christian or what you could call a Christian, he actually almost never uses the word Christian.

He always says in Christ.

He says to those who are in Christ.

And Paul wants us to think about ourselves, our identity in light of this, that we are in Christ, and that all that he is and all that he has accomplished through union with him by faith is ours.

Love one, do you see the life that is offered to you through abiding this morning?

By simple faith, you are connected to Jesus Christ so that all the fruit that he bore through his perfect obedience to God is now yours.

So that you can have all the blessings that he deserves because of his life.

Simply because you've placed your faith in him.

Jesus unites himself to you and gives that all to you.

Now, now let me tell you something I know about you.

I know that you want that.

I know that you want every spiritual blessing in Christ to be ushered into your life.

You know how I know that?

I know that because of the popularity of Disney movies in our culture.

Can I explain this to you?

Most Disney movies, and I've only seen a few, so forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but you know, I always speak confidently, anyways.

Now, most Disney movies kind of have a similar plot, don't they?

A girl is overlooked.

She's poor.

She is hidden away, she's mistreated, but then the prince comes.

The prince finds this girl, and when he marries her, everything for this poor, hidden, mistreated girl changes.

She's no longer poor.

Through union in marriage, she is exceedingly rich.

She's no longer hidden away in society.

Through union and marriage, she has the status of royalty.

She's no longer hopeless.

Through union and marriage, she has an inheritance.

She steps into a life that she did not earn.

And what do we do?

We cheer for her.

We wanted her to have this life.

She always deserved this life.

And finally, this prince has come and given her exactly what she deserved.

We long for this kind of story because in our heart we long for the same thing.

But loved one, I want you to understand that what happens in the gospel is even better than a Disney movie.

I had no idea I'd ever say a sentence like that.

If you told my homiletics professor, they would be deeply upset with me.

But what happens in the gospel is even better than that because you know the reality of these Disney movies.

We like them because we always are rooting for the girl, aren't we?

We're rooting for the poor one.

We're rooting for the hidden one.

I mean, we like her.

We're saying she needs to get what she deserves.

We as the audience see something that maybe no one else sees.

But when it comes to our life, we're not secretly impressive.

We don't have a hidden beauty.

I'm sorry to say it this morning, but you are not a Disney princess.

Okay?

If anything, you're more like Shrek.

You're more like Shrek this morning.

We're spiritually bankrupt, and yet the gospel isn't about God finding our hidden worth.

The gospel is about him providing worth to us when there is none.

Loved ones, the prince comes.

It is Jesus, and he offers to unite himself to you through faith.

Isn't this what we saw in Isaiah 55?

Love when Mike read that text and prayed over it.

In Isaiah 55, it is Jesus inviting those with no money to the table, inviting those with no righteousness to be united to himself.

This love, this abiding is not a mystical abiding.

It is a very real thing that happens when we are united with Jesus Christ.

And as Jesus continues to talk about it, he continues to get very practical about functionally how it works.

Look at verse 2.

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

Notice the order, loved one.

The branches in me, union comes first, and then the father acts.

What does the father do?

Well, theologically, the father's role is not to create life.

The father works in your life to cultivate life.

Where there is no life, Jesus tells us, the branch is removed.

Where there is life, the branch is pruned.

The branch is pruned.

Loved one, have you known the pruning hand of God in your life?

Have you felt the cutting away of comfort in your life?

The exposing of idols, the painful discipline of the Lord.

The gardener sees the branch and he cuts it so that life may abundantly grow from it.

But I want you to see here in verse 3 where this life comes from.

Look at what Jesus says.

Look at your copy of God's word in verse 3.

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

Before Jesus commands them to abide in verse 4, he gives them this assurance to his disciples, you are already clean.

Now, when Judas was with them in chapter 13, Jesus said the same thing, except he said, You are already clean, except for one of you.

Now he looks at his disciples that in the upper room as Judas has left and he says, You are all clean because, pay attention to this, because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Jesus looks at us and he declares this assurance of our cleanliness when we have not only heard his word, but believed it.

Life begins, loved one.

You attach yourself to the branch when you hear the gospel and by faith in your heart believe the gospel.

Then Jesus looks at you and he says these words that he says to said to his disciples You are clean.

You are clean.

This is important for us to understand.

So often we get it backwards.

We think we are clean once we kind of clean up our acts.

We think we are clean because of our perfect obedience.

But Jesus looks at us and he says, Your sin is such an infectious disease, you could not deal with it yourself.

You needed the scalpel of God's word to come and cleanse you by faith.

So that the call of this text is not to become clean.

You can't become clean.

You are not the source.

The call of this text, loved one, is first to receive life from Jesus Christ.

To receive life from the source of life.

Once we understand the call, then we're given the command in verse 5 and verse 4.

The command, then, is to abide in Christ.

If life is in Christ, verses 1 to 3, then what is needed of us is that we abide in it, that we remain in it.

And that's what I want you to see secondly, that there is life in the vine.

We find life in the vine when we remain in him.

When we remain in him.

Both those lives can look identical on the outside.

Both can go to work.

Both can raise families, both can serve in the church, both can check religious boxes, but the difference is not in the activity, Jesus is saying.

The difference is in the fruit.

When a branch is truly connected to the vine, look at this in verse 4.

That branch will bear fruit.

Abide in me, Jesus says, 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.

Verse 5, I am the vine, you are the branches.

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

Paul tells us the fruit that grows in Galatians 5, you've heard it before, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Jesus looks at our lives and he says, You can be busy with spiritual activity, doing all the same things as the person who is abiding in Christ is doing, but bear no fruit.

It is not spiritual activity that is of importance, it is abiding.

So that loved one, you will not know if you are abiding or not by how busy you are, but by what is growing in you, by the fruit of your life.

This becomes a healthy, incredible, incredibly helpful diagnostic for us to understand where our life is rooted, to understand where we are drawing life from.

You look at what is growing in you.

So that you know, maybe you work.

You go to work and you you do that to glorify God, you say.

You do that to witness to Christ, be a witness of Christ, you say.

And yet if you work and work makes you anxious, and work makes you bitter, and work makes you resentful.

The reality is that you cannot be abiding in Christ as you work, because if you abide in Christ, the opposite of those things come.

The fruit of abiding in Christ while you work is love, joy, peace.

You parent your children, you want to disciple them in the Lord, you want to raise them for the Lord's glory.

You recognize they are a gift from God, that you are just to steward this gift you have been given, and yet as you parent them, you're irritable, you're angry, you're constantly worried.

Loved one, if this is the fruit of your parenting, I want you to understand you cannot be abiding in Christ because the text is clear.

When you abide in Christ, you bear much fruit.

The way you know you are abiding in Christ is by looking at the fruit.

When you are doing these things, is the fruit of joy, is the fruit of peace, is the fruit of love, kindness coming up.

And I mean, I see this in so many of you.

I see it so clearly when you serve the Lord here.

When you come here on a Sunday morning and you serve the Lord, and there's this supernatural joy.

It does not make sense as you sacrifice a precious Sunday morning to serve the Lord, but there's this supernatural joy in serving, there's this supernatural peace in serving.

Why?

Because you are abiding in Christ as you do it.

And loved one, can you abide in Christ as you work?

Can you abide in Christ as you parent?

Can you abide in Christ and in your marriage?

Loved one, when you do, the promise is so clear.

Whoever abides in Christ, he it is that bears much fruit.

I want you to see the certainty of verse five.

Not that you might bear fruit, not that you will hopefully bear fruit.

As Jesus looks at your life, you know he has this rock solid confidence that if you are abiding in him, you will bear much fruit to his glory.

You know what that means, loved ones?

We're not stuck where we are.

You know, you look at your life and you've been wrestling with anxiety.

You look at your life and you've been wrestling with lust.

You look at your life and you've been wrestling with anger, and you just feel like the sin is rooted so deeply in you that you cannot get it out.

If you remain connected to Christ, look at the text.

This is not me, just you know, wishful thinking.

This is what Jesus is saying to you.

If your faith is in him, fruit will come.

Joy will grow, peace will grow, patience will grow.

This is the hope of verse five that if you abide in him, fruit follows.

But we cannot skip verse six.

Look down at your copy of God's word with me and notice the warning of verse six.

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.

It's a sobering reality.

What Jesus is describing here is a branch that never truly shared life in the vine.

Jesus has been clear all throughout this gospel that those who belong to him cannot be lost.

In John chapter 6, verse 37, he says, All that the Father gives me will come to me.

John 6:37

Whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

In John chapter 6, verse 39, he says, This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

John 6:39

In John chapter 10, verse 28 to 29, he says, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

John 10:28–29

No one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

And just three verses earlier, in this very chapter, Jesus looks at his disciples and says, Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

And so, as Jesus talks about the branches that bear that do not bear fruit, he looks at his disciples who he has already said, You're clean.

And if you are clean, you cannot be snatched from my hand or the Father's hand.

It's important then that we notice the language of verse six that Jesus is not contradicting himself.

He does not give eternal life to then take it back, he does not unite himself to you until you struggle and then depart from you.

Instead, he says, if anyone does not abide, so that the withering of verse six describes the reality.

It proves, like Israel did time and time again, that because there was no fruit, it was never actually alive.

And so I want you to understand here that verse six is not meant to terrify tender believers.

If you struggle with assurance, this verse is not meant to sort of like shake you into obedience.

It's meant to wake up those who look like they're connected to life.

Jesus does this all throughout the scriptures.

He says, Many will come to me and they'll look like they have life.

They'll cry, Lord, Lord.

This they'll say, Oh, I casted out demons.

I read your word, I showed up to redemption church.

I mean, it's the best church in the world, right?

Amen, right?

Amen.

I was there, I was around your people, I looked Christian, and Jesus says, There is no fruit.

There's no fruit, you never actually were abiding in the vine.

I want you to understand that that this passage actually gives tender comfort to those who wrestle with the assurance of salvation.

That Jesus looks at your life and says that if you are a branch in him, growth is gonna look like it does in plants.

Have you ever seen a plant grow?

I'll tell you, I have never looked long enough at a plant to see it grow.

Have you?

If you do, I there I can think of a hundred ways you could serve in this church.

If you have enough time to watch a plant grow, maybe you've seen it on YouTube, you know they gotta speed it up a thousand times for you to see that plant grow.

But man, it's just some days it does not seem like it's growing at all.

And if you love gardening, you can do everything you want to try to make that plant grow.

You can go outside, you can scream at it.

It just takes time.

It just takes time.

And you know what's not natural to you know what's not natural to dead branches?

Dead branches don't desire fruit.

They don't mourn for dryness, they don't cry out for life.

And so if you find yourself wrestling with assurance, wanting spiritual life, wanting salvation, can I just say that that desire is a fruit of the spirit?

That that doesn't come from the flesh.

Verse five is the hope.

If you abide, fruit will grow.

Verse six is the warning.

Withering reveals death.

And so I ask you again this morning, where are you drawing your life from?

Where are you drawing your life from?

We must abide.

There is no spiritual life apart from abiding.

And I hope that your heart right now is I mean, I want to abide.

I understand Jesus is the source of life.

I understand that the command is to remain in him.

I want to abide, but how?

Verse 7 to 10 tells us, I want you to see next, I find life in the vine when I respond to his love.

I find life in the vine when I respond to his love.

Up until now, Jesus has shown us where life begins and how we must remain in it.

But but now he wants to get immensely practical as he shows us what abiding looks like.

Loved one, if you want life, Jesus says, do these things.

Notice first in verse 7, he says, if you abide in me and my words abide in you.

Jesus assumes something about the disciple that is abiding in him.

He assumes that his word is then abiding in them.

I want you to notice firstly here that we abide by responding to his word.

Abiding is not a mystical pursuit, it's not a feeling of closeness to Jesus.

It is a very practical thing we do when we learn his word and apply his word to our lives.

To abide is to let his word live in you, Jesus says.

To let his word abide in you, to remain in you, to continue in you.

This is why we spent so many weeks in a series called Doctrine Matters, because I mean, church, we want to be close to God.

Amen.

I mean, we want to, let's do that again, okay?

We want to be close to God, amen.

We want to experience God.

We want to come in on a Sunday morning and experience Jesus Christ and his presence through his Holy Spirit.

And we want to open up God's word in the morning in our time of personal worship and know his nearness to us.

And Jesus looks at us and he says, There is no other way but by his word, by the word being planted in our lives and increasingly pressed deeper into his soul.

So that Jesus and knowing him, if you want to experience Jesus and know him, there is no other way but through his word.

His word is the foundation of it all.

You must receive his word.

Jesus assumes it.

If you abide in me, and my word abides in you.

And so can we just take a moment to hit the pause button on the sermon and take a step back and look at our lives?

So many times I meet with people who are struggling with sin, who genuinely want to defeat sin in their life, who look at the fruit of the spirit of joy and patience and peace and kindness and they say, I want that.

But then when I when they are asked, how are you reading the scriptures?

Are you storing the scriptures in your heart?

Are you studying the scriptures?

The answer is, Well, I've just been busy.

Love one, I mean, it's so plain, it's so simple here.

If you want the nearness of Jesus, you the word of God must abide in you.

There is no other way.

Abiding requires responding to his word.

But notice, secondly, in verse 7, what happens.

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

It's the second way we that we abide by praying.

You see the connection between the word abiding in you and prayer.

The word is what fuels prayer.

Prayer is not this sort of magical moment where you reach out into thin air and grab things that you want to say to God.

Prayer is responsive.

It is taking what God has said and saying it back to Him.

This is the heart of biblical prayer.

It's so practical for us that when you read God's word, you then also pray God's word.

This is this is a two-way conversation.

So that you read something like, love your enemies, and you pray, Lord, I mean, I don't love them, make me love them.

You read something like, be anxious for nothing, and you pray, Lord, I'm anxious.

I'm anxious.

Help me, teach me to trust you.

You read that the fruit of the spirit is patience, and you say, Lord, I got no patience for this person.

Give me patience.

And what's happening is you are experiencing what is called communion with God, where you're hearing his voice and you are responding to him through prayer.

The word is settling in your heart, then rising back up to heaven through prayer.

That is abiding prayer.

That is why I have you noticed that when we model prayer in our church, it's always on the foundation of God's word.

I love what Mike did this morning when he came up and he read Isaiah 55.

And then you did you notice what he did?

He prayed Isaiah 55.

Then he he also even got to Psalm 63.

I mean, that was just a freebie for you, a little bonus that he threw in there for you.

You can thank him later.

He's praying scripture.

Now, Mike is really glad that he did that this morning because if he didn't, this would have been really awkward, but he always does.

This is what prayer is.

Notice what Jesus says.

He says, if the word abides in you, ask whatever you wish.

Jesus does never in the scriptures does it just say, hey, listen, whatever you want, just ask God.

True biblical prayer is always according to the will of God.

And here Jesus makes it so clear.

If the word abides in you, then ask whatever you wish.

Why?

Because the word is forming your desires.

And so, can I ask you something so simple, so practical?

When you open your Bible, do you pray it?

Or do you simply move on?

Abiding is when the word does not just inform you, it forms you.

And prayer is where that formation happens when you pray God's word.

I am convinced, loved ones, that the reason why so many of us feel like God doesn't hear us when we pray is because we don't pray scripture.

If you sat with me and I was providing you biblical counseling, and you said, My spouse doesn't listen to me, and I started to dig into the scenario, and it turns out that every time you talk to your spouse, you then get up and leave the room.

I would say, Well, there's the problem.

You are trying to have a monologue.

You need a dialogue.

The word abiding in your heart, prayer, is that dialogue.

Can I tell you this practically?

I I never pray without either the scriptures open.

Most often that's what it is for me.

Or a scripture in my mind that is fueling what I'm praying about.

I mean, just this morning I prayed before the sermon, and on my mind is Titus chapter one, verse two, in hope of eternal life, which God who never lies, promised before the ages began and manifested at the proper time in his word through his preaching.

And you know what's happening?

That verse is now filling me with words to pray.

God, God, we are here for hope.

We are here because you promised hope before the ages began.

And then you've manifested it, God, in your word through the preaching.

And so here I am now preaching, Lord, and there's possibility for hope.

God, give me that hope.

You said you would do it, do it.

Do you understand the difference in prayer?

Uh than when I come up and I say, Well, God, you know, I really hope this is, I wish this would be really powerful.

That is what true biblical prayer is.

It is taking God at his word, not praying your will into heaven, wanting heaven to then shape your will.

That is why when Jesus teaches us to pray, he says, He begins with Father, your will be done on heaven, in heaven as it is done on earth.

It begins in heaven, heaven shapes our prayer.

Now, notice the direction of this passage.

Jesus is building a case.

The Son saves us by his word, he empowers us through abiding, he makes fruit grow through prayer and the word, so that so that what?

Look at verse 8.

By this, Jesus says, My Father is glorified.

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

Loved ones, God wants fruit from your life, but he wants a specific kind of fruit.

He is not looking for the fruit that comes from self-dependence.

He's not looking for the fruit that comes from effort.

God is looking for the fruit that comes from a life that is saved by his son, then empowered by his son to grow fruit for his glory.

The fruit that God produces through salvation, through empowering us is the fruit that glorifies God.

It is all of him.

I can't help but to realize how often you and I get this backwards.

We think, well, God will be glorified once I produce enough fruit for him.

Then he's gonna approve of me.

If I just perform well enough, he's gonna accept me.

The gospel reverses that God gives life first, then God grows fruit, and then that fruit glorifies him because it is entirely of him.

It has grown From dependence, it is shaped by his word, it is formed through prayer, and it brings him glory.

So that the kind of fruit that God is looking for is not fruit that comes from your strength, it is fruit that comes from the vine.

Not fruit that draws attention to how great you are, but fruit that reveals him.

If we want to abide, we we need to let the word abide in us.

We need to be people of prayer.

But the third way I want you to see that we abide in this text is by recognizing his love.

We recognize his love.

Look with me at verse seven.

Sorry, verse nine.

Verse nine, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.

Abide in my love.

You hear that, loved one?

Jesus has just lifted the curtain into eternity and he has shown us his love as the father has loved me.

Theologically, do you know how the father has loved Jesus?

How has the father loved Jesus?

The Father has loved Jesus eternally, infinitely.

The Father has loved Jesus as his perfect son, who has never once fallen short of his glory.

And my prayer right now is that the Holy Spirit would take this simple verse that Jesus loves us with the same love the Father has loved him with, and allow its weight to bear fully on your soul.

Christ loves you with the same quality of love.

It is no different.

The same way the Father loves the Son, so the Son loves you.

You are not barely tolerated by Jesus.

Do you understand that?

If you at any moment in your life have been barely tolerated by Jesus, then what Jesus is saying here is that the Father has barely tolerated him.

You are not conditionally accepted by Jesus, so that Jesus says, okay, I'm gonna listen, I'll love you now, but you better keep you better keep it up.

You better keep serving, you better keep reading, you better keep praying, you better keep doing it because I'm gonna stop loving you.

If Jesus were to love us like that, do you understand what this verse means?

It means that the Father has loved him conditionally like that.

You are loved, Jesus says, with a covenant love.

Jesus has said, I will love you no matter what.

And notice then what his application is then.

Abide in my love.

Not earn my love, not keep keep me loving you.

Make sure you make make this 2026 better be a good year.

It better be a good season of your life that I'm watching.

Otherwise, I'm not gonna watch it anymore.

The application here is abide in my love.

Live inside the reality of it.

You know, no one wants you to know you are loved more than Jesus Himself.

Isn't that kind of like the most important thing about love?

Is that the people that you're loving experience that love?

In fact, you know, my mom sits in the front row, and then my mother-in-law also sits in the front row, and often the mother of my children sits in the front row as well.

But, you know, one of the ways that I could really offend my mom this morning is if I stood up here and I just said, you know, my mom, she doesn't love me.

She doesn't love me at all.

She never loved me.

That'd be one of the ways that I could offend her the most.

Why?

Because she spent her life loving me.

I mean, I'm I'm her son, her favorite son, you know?

And she has spent her life loving me.

And for me to stand up here and not abide in that love, to not receive that love, to not live in that love would pain her more than anybody else.

And so, how much more then, if Jesus has loved you with the same love of the Father, are we then to live in it?

Jesus says, abide in it, rest in it, remain in it.

Verse 10 shows us how that happens.

Shows us how we do it.

Look at verse 10.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

And so many of us read this and we say, that's not love.

You make me obey you.

You make me follow rules.

That's that's not love at all.

And we begin to panic.

And it sounds almost like performance, but loved one, notice the order.

Verse 9, I have loved you.

Verse 10, obey.

Love precedes obedience.

The way that we often say it around here is this: we don't love, we don't obey for love, we obey from love.

We obey from love.

Obedience is what we do when we want to live in the warmth of fellowship with God.

Again, illustrations are so helpful here in our backyard in the summer.

We have a circle of sunflowers, and I mean, I love sunflowers because there's something really interesting they do.

When the sun comes up, the young sunflower will face its giant bulbous head towards the sun.

And then you know what happens as the sun moves across the sky?

That bulb will move with the sun.

What is the sunflower doing?

It's incredibly active, moving the whole day.

And when the sun goes down, then it moves again back, waiting for the sun.

The sun is the flower is tracking the sun, trying to live in as much warmth and light of the sun as possible.

And loved one, when it comes to obedience, that's what obedience, gospel-fueled obedience is.

It is obedience that causes us to experience the nearness of fellowship with Jesus Christ.

It is obedience that keeps us in the warmth of his love.

Jesus even grounds it in himself.

He says, Just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

This is the way that Jesus lived in joyful obedience to the Father.

His obedience was an expression of their shared delight.

And look what he then says in verse 11.

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

You see what happens there?

We move from light, from life to fruit, to love, to joy.

And it's a fascinating joy that we are offered here by Jesus Christ, because I want you to notice, loved one, that it is not just joy.

Look at your copy of God's word and look what Jesus says in verse 11 these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you.

That my joy may be in you.

This is the theological reality of the joy that Jesus invites you into.

It is not that he desires to ramp up your joy, he desires for you to know his joy.

It's the perfect joy of communion without sin.

It's the joy of knowing that he is loved by the Father.

It's the joy of walking in perfect obedience.

And it is the joy that the writer of Hebrews tells us would endure the cross for the joy set before him.

And what Jesus does here is invites us into something staggering, a joy that we could literally never experience on our own.

It is the joy of the Son in the Father, the joy of eternal communion, the joy of perfect love and obedience.

How did that joy come to us?

It was through his life.

Jesus would speak to his disciples in this upper room on the night before he was crucified.

And he looks forward to his cross and he says, It is through my body broken, my blood poured out.

You see the connection here.

The joy that Christ endured on the cross was what secured joy for all those who would believe in him.

It's the fullness of joy we experience in communion with God that we only experience because Christ was cut off in our place.

That's why he's called the man of sorrows.

He has no sorrow in and of himself, but he's taken on our sorrows that we might be full of joy.

As we celebrate communion this morning, we celebrate the reality of what Christ has done on the cross.

During communion, Jesus takes our sorrow and he makes a great exchange.

Through his blood and flesh, he gives us the fullness of his joy so that this cup that we hold in our hands, it's not a symbol of your contribution and your ability to win eternal life and to bear fruit.

It is a symbol of his love for you.

If you didn't receive a cup on your way in, the ushers are making their way to the front, and you can raise your hands in the air and they'll get you one.

I want you to understand that communion is something that we take very seriously because the Lord has instructed us to do that, that it is a celebration that is reserved for believers.

So if your faith isn't in Jesus Christ this morning, we would ask that you just let this pass.

Not that we wouldn't love for you to place your faith in him and to receive eternal life this morning.

We're also warned not to drink of this cup if we have unrepentant sin in our hearts, not that we have any sin in our hearts, but we have sin that we're unwilling to deal with.

We are told in the scriptures that this cup is provided for those who are cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

As we take this, I want to encourage you to take a few moments now to go before the Lord, maybe in prayer.

Practicing what we've just seen in his word, that abiding comes when his word abides in us and we pray to him.

Let's seek him in prayer and personally thank him for what he has done in providing us this cup.

As we think about life in the vine, what a practical symbol we have of life in our hands.

Life that could never come from our effort, from our obedience to your law, but could only come from your son and the blood that he shed for us.

God, we thank you for this cup we hold in our hands.

We thank you for the blood that Jesus shed.

And we do this celebrating the reality of our forgiveness, but also worshiping you, knowing, Lord, that it was your joy to send your son and his joy to die on the cross.

God, we give you all the praise and we thank you.

I pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

You can take the bread.

Jesus told his disciples.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way, he also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together.

Amen.

Having responded to all that Christ has accomplished to us, let's now respond in song.

Would you stand and join with me as we sing?