I AM: The Vine

Good morning, welcome the venture in the room and joining us online. My

name is Die. I'm part of the team here at our central campus with

the daunting task of cramming a message into what's left of this service. I

buckle up, everybody. Actually, what I'm tasked to do is complete our

series through the Book of John called I Am, where we're looking at the

seven im statements made by Jesus, where he is undeniably connecting himself to God.

So God in the Old Testament says I Am. That's how he introduces

himself. That is his name. Jesus is now through these few statements that

he's made undeniably declaring who his character is, but also connecting himself to God.

And I'm going to run through just a couple in case you're here for

the first time you haven't been here. I encourage you to go back and

listen to those messages later, but for our purposes. So far, Jesus

has declared himself I am. The first one was the Bread of life.

And he's establishing this pattern of a declaration with demonstration, so like proof.

So he says I Am the Bread of life, and then he backs it

up by feeding five thousand people. He says, I am the Light of

the world. Just before he heals a man who was born blind and had

been blind for his entire life. He says, I am the Door and

I am the good Shepherd, and those two are tied together in the same

little section of text, and both of those are meant to be an illustration

of just as a shepherd would lay down its life for its sheep, and

just as a shepherd would sleep in the doorway so that no harm could come

to the sheep in the sheep pin, that is Jesus himself both the door

and the shepherd for the sheep. He then says I am the Resurrection and

the Life, and raises a man who was dead for four days from the

dead to prove that he has the keys to death, hell, and the

grave, which is pretty pretty remarkable. And then he finishes off by saying

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We looked at

this one last week. Jesus isn't setting himself apart from every other God that

could be seen as a way to God. He is saying I am the

only way to God. And in that statement, he is saying I am

the only way. I am creator God. I am one with God.

I am the creator and sustainer of life. And today we will look at

our final I am statement found in John chapter fifteen, and it says Jesus

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

Before we go any further, would you bow your heads with me as we

pray, God, we thank you that you are included in this statement as

the vine dresser, and Jesus, we thank you that you are our source

of life as the vine. And as we dive into this I pray for

open hearts, not just to absorb and understand this message, but the context

of all of these statements leading up to this statement. Help us to have

open hearts and open ears. It's in your name, we pray, Jesus.

Amen. It's important for our purposes this morning to understand just a little

bit of context. So this statement that Jesus is making is part of a

larger narrative, So there's a larger section of versus. I encourage you to

go and explore this a little bit yourself, but I want to just back

us up a hair so that we can understand what is set the stage for

this statement. So this statement is made during Passover. Now, Passover was

an annual celebration, incredibly important, and we are going to focus on that

next week in our Palm Sunday message. That is next Sunday. So I'm

gonna ask you to hold on to your questions about Passover for next Sunday where

we deep dive on that. But that is the setting. And in a

Passover celebration, you would gather to share a meal, among other things.

So Jesus is gathered with his closest friends, his disciples, his followers.

They're gathered for a meal, and he starts off this little section, the

Passover section, by doing something incredibly humbling, humiliating, even the menial task

that would be reserved for a servant. And that as he starts off the

meal by kneeling and washing the very dirty feet of his disciples and followers,

he also then predicts that someone sitting at the table, remember these are his

closest friends, is about to betray him. He knows that's Judas. Judas

knows that's Judas, and Judas shortly after gets up from the table to go

commence the betraying activity itself. Jesus is also encouraging his followers. He's sort

of preparing them for the looming crucifixion, his own death that is coming that

they certainly don't know is coming. And he reminds them to love each other.

And this sort of feels like this encouragement as he's preparing them, because

he understands that they're largely going to desert him when he needs them the most,

and there's this encouragement of love there to remind them that even when you

fail, or disappoint or betray, even the Father's love is still there for

you. He also declares he is the only way to the Father. That's

the statement we looked at last week. He promises the help of the spirit

to continue to follow him, and then he makes this statement where he says,

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

Now we've only read one verse, but we already need to do a little

bit of understanding here to get the full picture that's happening, and that is

this word choice of a vine dresser. Now, your translation, if you're

reading out of a Bible, might say gardner. That's a really common translation.

I actually chose the ESV because I like the imagery of a vine dresser

more. I love the picture of the artistry and the specialty of a vine

dresser because when I think of a gardener, no offense if you're a gardener,

but like I naturally picture more of a landscaper, like someone who mows

the lawn and weed wax the weeds. But this is a very specialty type

of an occupation. And though what might be obvious is that a vine dresser

is going to prune and help these vines to grow to produce fruit, I

want you to hear that the most important top goal of a vine dresser is

optimizing both the quality and the abundance of grapes. The quality and the abundance

of the grape. Everything else is a part of what helps those two things

happen. Now, it's a physically demanding job, especially during harvest time.

You can actually look up the job description of a vine dresser. I don't

know if that interests you, it does me, so I looked it up.

Current modern day job description of a vine dresser, same as it's been

for all of these thousands of years. Incredibly hard work. So during the

harvest season we could all assume that would be hard work. Those are like

eighteen hour days, but not just during the harvest season winter spring. You're

talking about the preparation of these vines for the next season of harvest to come,

and that is I mean, you can read it for yourself. I

actually linked this in our What's Next page on our app if you'd like to

study this. But you have to do lots of cutting back. You have

to make sure the roots are underneath the dirt, that they haven't grown up

above the dirt. You have to make sure they're well water. There's fertilizing,

and then there's all the remediation of pests and mold and you know,

making sure that nothing's choking the vine and et cetera, et cetera. There's

so much that goes in because a vine, once it starts growing, it

grows incredibly fast. So you're testing the soil and making sure the pH is

right, all these things. So when Jesus makes this declaration that he's a

vine, it's important to note also that he's including his father in this statement.

So this is not just Jesus saying what he is, I'm the true

vine. It's also a declaration of who his father is. The vine dresser.

So now he has undeniably connected himself to the Father for his hearers.

So God is our vine dresser, Jesus true vine. Okay. So my

next question to follow was why true vine? Why not just a vine or

the vine? Why the true vine? You can actually do some study on

this too. For our purposes today, I will just sort of suffice it

to say that the imagery of a vine is used all throughout the Bible.

In the Old Testament, Israel is actually depicted as a vine. Okay.

So that's the imagery used in the Old Testament, that Israel, the nation

that was in enslaved in Egypt, that that vine was taken from Egypt and

planted in the land of Israel, with God as the caretaker or the vine

dresser of Israel. The vine. If you've read long in your Bible,

or you know a human being, you know humans mix it up a lot

or make mistakes, and so what happens is Israel. The people struggle to

be faithful. So God withdraws his protection from them, but he doesn't just

leave them hopeless. He gives them the hope that one day he will provide

one who would remain faithful, who would then help God's people become fruitful.

So Jesus is the true vine because he is that one that was promised that

God said, I'm gonna send one who's gonna help you be fruitful because you

struggle to be fruitful. Okay, you with me so far? Good?

Oh come on, man an open that. No, you don't need a

clap. I just want to know you're with me and you're not dozing off.

Okay. So now that we understand this little bit of context and we

understand a little bit more what Jesus is declaring, now we can look at

what he teaches in these couple of verses to follow. So look with me

at verses two through four. So John fifteen, verses two through four,

and I'm reading from the ESV. Jesus says, every branch in me that

does not bear fruit, he which is the vine dresser, which is God,

takes away in 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 with me. Now, if you have any background in

church, or you've grown up in church, you probably read those verses a

very specific way. And I don't mean this to be mean, but typically

someone who has grown up reading their Bible thinks something like every branch that doesn't

bear fruit is completely worthless and is going to be ripped off of the vine

and thrown into the fires of hell itself because it's not good for anything except

to go straight to hell. Which might be a little extreme, but that

tends to be the leaning that we have. But I want you to hear

this section is not about condemnation. This section is about cutting off that comes

from a pruning. Now, this cutting off is actually probably better said cutting

back. Okay, cutting back versus cutting off. Now. I chose the

ESV because I think the wording here is true to this idea, to the

cutting back idea. Okay, it says every branch that doesn't bear fruit,

he takes away, he the vine dresser. Okay, So a little bit

of Greek for you. So the Greek word for takes away is iro irow

and it can also mean take up. Now, it can mean take up

like this fan, this branch isn't doing its job, so it's you know,

removed, and it's taken up or taken away or taken up to be

taken away. It can mean that or it can match something that I think

matches better what vine dressers actually do. When a vine begins growing, it

grows rapidly. Okay, multiple shoots are coming out once that vine. I'm

not an expert, this is just you know, study, but once that

vine starts to grow, the branches in the off shoots, they go quickly.

So there's no sleeping on the job for the vine dresser. Vine dresser

has to be paying attention. Often those vines begin growing right above the dirt.

Okay, so those offshoots are traveling, you know what a vine is

like, They're traveling along the ground. The problem with that is the fruit

on the ground is stunted. Okay, it's either rotting or it's in danger

of mold, or it's on the ground, so it just can't grow bigger.

And those vines are actually compromising the overall structure of the vine itself.

All those little offshoots, all those branches add a weight and a heaviness to

the vine itself. So there's this beautiful picture that happens where the vine dresser

knows this and takes up the branches in order to prop them or provide support

or tie them to something or attach them to something for the purpose of training

them. And the act of taking up is for the purpose then of growing

up. Instead of growing along the ground where the fruit is stunted and the

fruit rots, the taking up is for the purpose of the growing up.

I hope you heard me say that that's good. But in addition to branches

that aren't bearing good fruit being taken away or taken up, branches that are

bearing fruit are pruned so that they will bear more fruit. Okay, so

there's a purpose here. The pruning is for more fruit. Now there's a

wordplay happening here in the Greek that we totally miss because it doesn't exist when

translated to English. We already know because I told us that the word for

takeaway is iro, But add to that a very similar sounding and spelling word

for pruning, which is cathiro, so iro and cathiro, And that word

can mean pruning, but it also can mean cleansing. Why on earth would

you describe anything you'd do with a vine as cleansing. That was my question.

So let's slow down for a second. You're all saying, thank goodness,

you're talking so fast because you you don't see the clock. Let's slow

down for a second. See if we can understand this. To the untrained

eye, of which you and I I'm guessing one hundred percent of us or

close to it, are the untrained eye when it comes to vines and vineyards,

To the untrained eye, the pruning of a vine actually, and i'll

use my word, looks like a massacre. I mean, it looks like

the thing has been hacked into little bits and all its pieces are strewn all

over the place, waiting to be gathered up and thrown away or burned.

But the pruning is incredibly important. In fact, I will say it is

critical to the life of the vine. There's a few reasons, one of

them being, and I don't know this myself, I had to study this.

But the farther that the sap has to travel, and the sap is

what feeds the fruit. The farther it has to travel, the less likelihood

that the fruit at the ends is going to mature or develop in any way

whatsoever. In addition, the vine, the actual physical plant can only sustain

so much weight and so much fruit. I hope that right now your mind

is going to all of these parallels you can make to us spiritually that I

don't have to spell out for you, because they all exist and they're incredibly

obvious. But the physical plant itself can only bear so much, and so

there must be pruning in order for the fruit to come to maturity and in

order for the fruit to be well fed. I have an apple tree in

my backyard, which makes me, of course, an expert gardener of some

sort. But what I do know, and we did this last year,

We actually pruned our apple tree because the year before all the apples were like

this big and super bitter. Have you had those kinds of apples in your

yard? What do I do with these apples? And so we pruned the

tree and it developed these gigantic apples. So it's incredibly true of fruit in

general. The pruning is critical. Are you with me? Pruning though,

stress is the vine, which is interesting. It provides a stress to the

vine, and what that stress does is force the energy of the vine into

the fruit instead of where it wants to put the energy, which is the

leaves and more shoots or more branches, it actually diverts that energy into fruit.

The vine dresser then is constantly assessing the delicate balance between branches, off,

shoots, fruit, and the vine itself with the best interest of the

vine at heart. And seeing the vine thrive in spring all the way through

harvest is how we know what the vine dresser has done was incredibly important.

So hear me say this, The act of pruning does in fact clean the

vine. It cleans it up. It keeps it from being too disorganized or

too chaotic. And by the way, John who's the author of the Book

of John, he uses cleansing motif all throughout his book, so it is

not weird for him to talk about cleaning something. But the play on words

in Greek continues. John is doing this intentionally. If you don't find this

interesting, I'm so sorry. I just think this is so fun that this

is happening in the original language. So we have iro, which means to

take up. We have kathiro, which means to prune or to cleanse.

And then it continues into verse three where Jesus says to his disciples that they're

already clean. I don't know if you caught that, Like, why is

he talking about them being clean in the middle of vines and vine dressers?

And that Greek word is catharros, very similar to the other two. Now,

catharros because of the word okay, word means logos. At the very

beginning of the Book of John, John says that in him was the word,

and the word was Jesus. Logos Jesus is the word. Okay,

So logos means total message, and it's it's again how John introduces his gospel,

because he declares logos's Jesus the total message. And as a result,

the disciples are cleansed when they receive the total message. When they listen to

and believe Jesus, his word bring cleansing to them. Just as when the

vine dresser is pruning the branches of the vine, he's actually cleaning up the

vine. So let's just restate it. So the vine dresser god IROs takes

up and cuth IROs prunes or cleanses the branches of the vine. Jesus and

the branches You and me, the followers of Jesus, are kuthros cleansed by

believing the logos the word. Who is Jesus Christ, who has been sent

to them to declare the truth? WHOA If you like, you could read

that a few times and maybe it'll come to you later. But and it's

just really, really deeply immeshion embedded. So it's a lot to understand.

But this small section then closes out in verse four, where Jesus exhorts his

disciples to abide or your translation might say, remain in him. In fact,

in the next couple verses, it says it ten times abide or remain

in me. And it's so logical. If you do abide in me,

you'll bear fruit. But if you're not abiding or connected to me Jesus talking,

just like a branch not connected to an actual vine won't bear fruit,

you also will not be able to bear fruit. Utterly and completely logical.

A branch that is not connected is already dead. In fact, did you

know that the very second a branch is removed from its life source, whatever

that is. It could be a branch of a tree, it could be

a flower removed from its plant. As soon as it is removed, it

begins to decompose. Anything not connected to its life source has already begun to

die totally logical and not a statement of proximity. This is a statement of

utter dependence. This is not a statement of proximity. Jesus is not saying

if you take a branch and remove it from the vine and lie it next

to the vine, it's close enough. It's just going to receive some nourishment

because it's nearby. Do you see the parallel here? If you and I,

If you declare yourself to be a follower of Jesus, but you aren't

connected to the life source Jesus himself. You could be near him, but

that nourishment which is in order to produce fruit, is not just magically blowing

on a good wind near you. Do you understand this? We must be

connected to the life life source, not casually leaned up against, not casually

in the vicinity of the believer. Cannot have life and fruit by casual relationship.

It is a deep and intimate abiding. It's intentional. This connection to

Jesus, to his presence, to his person, to his words, to

his power, to his love. It is deep and intentional. And I

just want you to hear me say this all of the language of this section.

Though I might be portraying it more passionately. Is language of loving care

for both the vine and the branches. This is loving care. If you've

ever thought of God as the one who whacks away the branches so that he

can cast them into hell, that is not the language here. The language

here is of a vine dresser who cares for the health and well being of

the vine and the fruit that is being produced, and lovingly assesses the condition

that the plant is in in all of its offshoots in order to take up

and train so that it will grow, so that it will be healthy,

so that it will produce healthy, good, abundant fruit. So the cutting

back is necessary for this care. It's also necessary for the fulfillment of the

purpose of the vine, which is again what bearing fruit. But there isn't

just cutting back. The vinet dresser also does cut off. And I will

make this as simple and concise as possible, but we can't just breeze over

the fact that the vine dresser does remove branches that are not alive or not

doing their job. If you look at verses five and six, Jesus canines

and it almost sounds like he's gonna completely and exactly repeat himself. He says,

I'm the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and

I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from

me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me,

He's thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered and

thrown into the fire and burn. Here we are come to the fire.

Okay, But here's what you have to understand is where Jesus sounds like he's

gonna repeat himself, he changes the narrative just a little. He says,

yes, you must be connected to me. If you're not, you're not

gonna bear fruit. But if you are connected me, you're gonna bear fruit.

But also, if you're not connected to me, you're actually gonna do

nothing. Apart from Christ, you and I can do nothing. Now this

flies in the face of our culture. Our culture is all about all the

things they can do if I speak and encourage myself and talk positively. And

I'm not saying against that, but this is not possible without being connected to

the vine. If we aren't connected to the vine, it doesn't matter how

much we believe in ourselves or all the things that we think we can accomplish.

We are dependent on the life source of the vine, and without the

life source of the vine, we can do nothing. And that is specifically

in this topic of bearing fruit. Do you see this. This is not

like you can't go and have a job, and you can't go and build

a bank account and you can't raise children. It's saying you can't bear fruit,

which means we have to ask ourselves a really important question, which is

what is the fruit? Because there's no fruit and no life with no connection

to the vine. Verse six tells us what is in store for the branch

that isn't connected, And we're going to get to what is that fruit?

But it's interesting because the branch from a vine. And I never thought about

this until I studied it this week. You don't like, cut off some

of the branches you don't need and go build a tape with them. They're

just not that kind of wood. You cut them off, and what they

are used for is fuel for a fire. That's their value. Now,

this is not a statement of like our value to God. This is a

statement of without God, we can't produce fruit. We can't even make a

good table out of ourselves. We need Jesus because he is the life source.

I'm pretty sure none of us is out here raising our hand, going

I really want to live a life with no purpose and no fruit and no

direction. And it is found those things are found abiding in Christ. So

as I bring this home, let's just think about for a second, what

does it mean to abide and what's the fruit that is a result. Now,

this is where if you have church background, if you grew up in

church, and if I ask you to raise your hand, it'd pray be

a lot of you. But this is where we go abiding Christ, or

your translation might say remaining in Christ? How do I do that? This

is where we insert ideas like why should read my Bible, I should pray,

I should go to church. Maybe you'll add things like I should serve

and give, and maybe you know, you'll add like I should maybe try

fasting. That sounds really spiritual. And while those things are really important,

they are important, and maybe we could just stop there and say, you

want to remain in Jesus, do the things that help you get closer to

Him? So they are, they're good, but they're not the point.

The point is not that you and I have a checklist by which we stay

connected to the vine The point is bigger than that. I recently let me

illustrate it this way. I recently reread an old book and it's called The

Pursuit of God by aw Tozier. And there's this one image that just captured

my heart so perfectly, And it was about pianos, which has nothing to

do with the vineyard. Sorry, but he was explaining, like in church

today, we work really hard to stay in unity, right or conformity.

Maybe like how do I look like the other Christians around me? How do

I stay and step and in sync with the other Christians around me? And

maybe like this would be ridiculous to put it in vineyard terminology, but like

why would one branch think I don't look like all the other branches? Like

I can't have an offshoot over here or a bud right here. That's not

what the other branches look like. But we spend a lot of energy trying

to stay in step with other people. But if you know anything about music,

which I don't know a lot, but I know this, if you

want to tune a piano, you tune it to the tuning fork. And

if we have a whole room full of pianos. They're gonna get in trouble

if they try and stay in tune with each other, cause you get like

six pianos out and it's out of tune because the one in front of it

wasn't perfect and the one before that wasn't perfect. But if they all tune

to the same tuning for they are then coincidentally in tune with each other.

And I just love the beauty of our alignment with Jesus, our life source,

our ultimate life source, our alignment, our connection, our intimate attachment

to Him, is how we stay abiding in Him. The importance is that

you and I figure out how to tune our lives to Jesus, how to

tune our lives to God, the Father, the vine dresser, and then

coincidentally we will remain in tune with each other, which is a beautiful byproduct

of the health of the whole. Do you understand, like the health of

this whole thing, and I don't just mean venture, but the health of

this whole following Jesus thing is each one of us aligning ourselves to the vine,

and not just I'm a branch. I'm just gonna lean up next to

the vine. I'm going to go away from the vine for a while,

and when I start getting hungry, I will come back. There's so many

there's so many parallels. You see them. I don't need to continue.

While spiritual disciplines like prayer and reading your Bible and fasting and those things are

incredibly important, abiding is actually who we are, and our life and our

fruit come from who we are. We're either connected or we're not. I'm

going to bring it to a close. And I originally was gonna do this

big overview verses seven through seventeen, So I'm just going to encourage you to

read those on your own, but I want you to hear that if you

read those, and I do encourage you to, you're going to see the

things that come as a result of staying connected to the vine to Jesus,

which also known as abiding in Him. And those fruits, if I were

to summarize them into really big categories, are life, love, and joy.

And it's interesting because one of the first verse in this section says Jesus

says, when you pray, ask for whatever you want and it'll be done.

Is he giving us carte blanche? You know, sant list, wish

list. No, he's saying, if you're in the vine, you're already

gonna want what's best for the vine and the branch, which is you,

and you're gonna want what's gonna bring fruit. So when you pray, you're

already in alignment, you're already tuned to the tuning for and so what you

want is already what's best for you anyway, and it is my joy to

bring that to completion in your life. That fruit the life you and I

are looking for the purpose, we look for the love we're desperate to feel.

Those fruits are only produced in your in my life when we are connected

to the vine. Last thing I didn't know this, so you probably didn't

either, But in nineteen sixty nine when the first Americans walked on the Moon,

then in the last service, I said, was Lance Armstrong who rode

his bike there. Apparently Yep, it wasn't on video though, so we're

okay. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin his second in command that no one knows

the name of poor guy. When they got to the moon and landed,

there was a delay in opening the door, and that delay wasn't because something

went wrong. It was just because they got to make sure, like this

is a big moment, we're going to walk out of the space shuttle onto

the moon. And so before they opened that door, buzz Aldrin, who

was an elder in his Presbyterian church, actually took communion in the space shuttle,

and then when he stepped out onto the surface of the moon, he

made a comment about how beautiful it was, and then he read this verse

John fifteen to five. Jesus said, I am the true Vine, and

my father is the vine dresser. Whoever abides in me and I in him,

he it is that bears much fruit. I mean, the conclusion is

so simple it's hard to walk it out though, that our job is to

stay connected to the vine, to the true source of our life, and

if and when we do that, we will experience the fruit of life,

love and joy. I'm going to ask you to buy your heads because I'm

going to close us in prayer. I don't know everyone in this room or

watching online, so I don't know where you're at in a relationship with Jesus

the True Vine. So I would really miss it if I didn't give you

an opportunity to respond. So likely there are two big categories here that may

need to respond. And the first category would be just you just don't know

Jesus. You're here and this is you know, your first time or your

second time, or it's been a long time since you've been here, and

you just don't know this life that is even possible for you. And so

that opportunity for you is to know Jesus as your source of life and connect

your life to him, align life to him. But the other big category

is probably people who have maybe drifted away. And if we talk about proximity,

you've just been near the vine, but you're not connected to the vine

and you know it because you're not seeing the fruit of life and joy and

love. And so your response would be I got to reconnect. So all

across this room and online, I can't see your responses, but I ask

you to respond if you're in this room, and you would say, either

I neither reconnect my life to the vine or I want to know Jesus.

I want to align my life to him. Would you just raise your hands?

When I know who I'm praying for all across this room, thank you,

thank you, thank you, just another second, great thank you you

can put it up and put it down. Thank you, thank you.

Thanks always. I love that always when we make the offer for people to

meet Jesus, they respond at venture. It's such an incredible blessing. I'm

going to ask if you will stand on your feet so we can close in

prayer together, and as I pray, would you just receive this as your

prayer as well. Jesus is not trying to hide from us, So as

you bow your heads enclose your eyes, Jesus wants you to find him.

He wants you to know him. He wants you to be connected to him.

He wants you to bear fruit. So with that understanding, we pray

Jesus, thank you that you are the life source, that the fruit of

us being connected to you is life, love and joy. And so we

ask first of all that you would forgive us if we have tried to do

this on our own, if we've tried to produce fruit or make our own

way and not been connected to you, would you forgive us? Would you

bring us into a restored relationship with you as the true source of life.

God, We thank you that as we submit ourselves to you, you help

connect us to your son. So I pray that connection would be deep,

intimate, powerful and unbreakable. And it's in Jesus' name we pray Amen.