Abide in the Vine — John 15:1-17 (09.20.2026)

Morning. You can remain standing as a way of honoring the reading of God's Word.

Our sermon text this morning comes from the book of John, chapter 15, verses 1 through 17.

John 15:1–17

When I'm finished reading, I'll say, this is the Word of the Lord,

and you can respond by saying, thanks be to God.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 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 anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers,

and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish,

and it will be done for you.

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

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

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

just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.

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

and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing.

But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go

and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the

Father in my name, he may give it to you.

These things I command you so that you will love one another.

This is the word of the Lord.

All right, good morning. Go ahead and be turning in your Bibles to John chapter

John 15 · chapter mention

15, if you have one, and hopefully you got an insert with the scripture on it.

If you don't have your Bible this morning, you can follow along there.

As you're finding your way to John 15, I'm going to pray one more time for us.

Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word,

these words, this passage in John 15.

There's so much for us to learn here, and I pray you would make our hearts receptive,

to the truths that we're going to be studying today.

I pray that you would help me to say what is true and in a helpful way and that

you would work in our lives mightily in Jesus name. Amen.

Well, maybe you've had the experience of going about your morning and maybe

you're at work already and you look down and you realize that your phone was about to die.

That happened to me pretty recently, and I thought I had charged it the night before.

I'd put it on the charger the night before, and there I am, and I'm going about

my day, and my phone's about to die.

And when that happens, I didn't go to my settings and tell my phone,

recharge yourself, right?

I knew that there was a problem with the connection the night before.

I had tried to charge my phone the night before, and apparently it wasn't actually connected.

And so I knew that the only way that I'm going to solve that problem is by getting

it to a charger because a phone can't power itself without the help of an outside

source. And neither can we.

We cannot be our own source of spiritual power.

And we know this, we know this theologically, but oftentimes by the way that

we live our lives day to day, we prove by the way that we live that we don't really believe it.

And by the way, it's not what we say that we believe that we actually,

those aren't the things that we actually believe.

The things that we live out that proves what we really believe.

And even though as Christians, we know that we belong to Christ,

we're prone, at least from time to time, to live as though we didn't really need him daily.

We might think that, well, we need him for our forgiveness, but we don't necessarily

believe that we need him day by day, hour by hour to live the Christian life.

In other words, we try functioning day-to-day and week-to-week with little to

no power because there's a problem with our connection to Christ,

and we are ignoring the warning signs.

Our passage this morning in John addresses this very thing.

So where are we in John? Well, we have been in the upper room discourse,

the farewell discourse, it's also called.

And now we're moving from that upper room where Jesus washed the disciples'

feet, predicted his betrayer.

Judas went out to betray him, and he's taught the disciples several things.

And then at the end of John 14, he says, rise, let us go from here.

So as he's teaching these things in John 15, they're on their way to the garden of Gethsemane.

Maybe they're passing by some vines and he's actually using them and pointing

them out as he's teaching this.

But either way, they're on their way to the garden where he's going to be arrested.

And eventually crucified. So he's teaching them. He's using a physical thing.

He's using vines. He's using plants and fruit. And this wasn't a new thing for Jesus.

This wasn't the first time he had done it. You might be familiar with some of

his teachings that use agriculture to teach spiritual truth.

For example, he would say that a tree, the fruit that a tree bears is evidence

of the kind of tree that it is.

He would say that if you see healthy fruit on a tree, then it's evidence that

it's a healthy tree. If you see diseased fruit on a tree, then it's evidence

that it's a diseased tree.

And this teaching goes very much in line with that.

A person's life is going to bear fruit. The fruit that it bears is evidence

of what's in that person, the kind of heart that that person has.

So he says in this passage that we must be connected to him,

abide in him in order to bear fruit, in order to bear good fruit.

And we must be vitally connected. When I say vitally connected,

I mean there must be a living connection between the branch and the vine in

order for us to bear fruit.

This is one of the most practical teachings that we're going to get in the whole

book of John. Many of you are familiar with it. Some of you have studied it and love this passage.

I hope that you'll open up your heart this morning to hear it as though for

the first time, because we all need this teaching to land on us fresh this morning,

to be reminded of its truths or to hear them for the very first time.

Jesus is truly our only source of spiritual power in this life.

He's our only source of fruitfulness in this life, but we must abide in him

through conscious dependence, through his word dwelling in us and through prayer.

My outline this morning is really simple. We're gonna talk about the vine,

the branches, the fruit and the connection. So stay with me as we make our way

through the first three points.

And maybe you'll be asking yourself that question, but how, but how,

but how, and just know we're getting there. We're getting to the how at the end.

So point number one, the vine, the vine. We cannot abide in Jesus unless we know him.

So who is this vine? He says, I am the true vine.

We've gone through now six other I am statements in the gospel of John.

This is the seventh I am statement in John's gospel.

Jesus has said, I am the bread of life. I am the light of the world.

I am the door of the sheep.

I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life.

I am the way, the truth and the life. And now I am the true vine. He is all of this for us.

And so now he is saying that he is the true vine. Why the true vine?

He must mean that there is another vine, but he is the true vine.

Several times in the Old Testament, God has described his covenant people,

Israel, as a vine that he's planted, that he's desiring fruit from,

and yet that vine only produced fruit.

Sin, disobedience. So for example, Jeremiah 2, 21, God says to Israel,

I planted you a choice vine. And then he says, how then have you turned degenerate?

In Hosea 10, 1, the Lord says, Israel is a luxuriant vine.

The more its fruit increased, the more altars he built.

And then in Isaiah 5, verse 7, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.

Isaiah 5:7

And the men of Judah are his pleasant planting.

And he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed, for righteousness, but behold, an outcry.

So one of the amazing truths that Jesus is saying here right off the bat is

that he is the true and better Israel.

He is the true vine. He's the one who's come to fulfill all that Israel could not.

Maybe you've seen those connections before, that Jesus, like Israel, came out of Egypt.

He went to Egypt, right, to get away from Herod, and he was brought out of Egypt.

And then he passed through the waters, just like Israel. He passed through the waters of baptism.

And then where did he go immediately after that? He went into the wilderness

testing, just like Israel. So he is the true and better Israel.

He is the true vine, the one that is going to bear fruit that pleases God.

The next thing that we see that Jesus is teaching here is found by examining the metaphor itself.

And he's saying that all growth and health in a vine flows through the vine to the branches.

It flows through the vine to the branches. If the branch needs water,

it must get it from the vine.

If it needs nutrients, the vine must supply it. If the branch contains sap,

it must be drawn from the vine.

If you could cut open a branch and examine it with a microscope,

all that it contains, you would not find anything in it that was not first contained

in the vine, unless there was something harmful from outside,

like a parasite or a disease that was attacking that branch.

So the vine is the source for all that the branch needs to live and to produce fruit.

We must know the vine to grow in the vine.

And this is because in the Christian life, we don't grow independently.

All growth in the Christian life is in Christ.

So who is he? Well, Ephesians 2.8 tells us that Paul preached the unsearchable riches of Christ.

That means that we could dig into the person of Jesus Christ for all of our

lives, for all of eternity, and never find all that there is to know about Jesus.

He is unsearchable.

And yet we can know many things about Jesus.

He is our all sufficient source.

And so what is in Jesus that you need? Well, do you need strength?

Jesus supplies strength. Philippians

4.13, Paul says, I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Do you need wisdom? 1 Corinthians 1.30 says that Christ became to us wisdom from God.

Colossians 2.30 says, or three says, in Christ are hidden all the treasures

of wisdom and knowledge. Do you need peace?

Jesus says in this next chapter, John 16.33, in me, you may have peace.

He said before, I'm leaving you with my peace.

Do you need love? In verse nine, it says, as the father has loved me,

so have I loved you, abide in my love.

And here in this passage in John 15, 11, one of my favorite verses,

Jesus says, these things I've

spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

Which of us doesn't need more joy? Which one of us doesn't need to have a greater

and abiding and unshakable joy?

Christ offers us his joy. And he says, when you have my joy,

you're going to have full joy.

Everything we need in this life and everything we need in the life to come,

Jesus offers to those who abide in him.

He is our all-sufficient source, our strength, our wisdom, our peace,

our love, our joy. It's all from him.

He is the true vine and there is no other.

Point number two, let's look at what we can learn from this passage about the branches.

First of all, he says in verse two, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And then later on in 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.

Maybe when you were a kid, you liked to climb trees. I loved to climb trees when I was a kid.

And especially in the winter time you you often could not tell the difference

in a living branch and a dead branch until you put some weight on it,

and what happened when you put weight on a dead branch it didn't bend with you

it didn't give with you it would snap right,

because even though on the outside it may have looked the same as the other

branches on the inside it was dry and brittle. It was lifeless. There was.

No vitality there, no life coming into that branch.

The Father is saying that there are branches that look to be like real branches,

that look to be connected, but there's something inside of them that's dead.

It's a reference to spiritual decay, and they're going to wither,

and they're going to be burned. That's a reference to final judgment.

Some people have read this and they have become fearful that that meant that

they could lose their salvation.

That it meant that, oh, I could be attached to Jesus truly and then be taken

away from him and separated from him for eternity.

But that's not the case. Already in chapter 10, we've seen some really,

really clear teaching from Jesus.

In chapter 10 of John, Jesus says in verse 27, my sheep hear my voice and I

know them and they follow me.

Verse 28, I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will

snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to

snatch them out of the father's hand.

Those who are truly his sheep can never be separated from him.

Nothing could ever take those who are truly his away.

So these are something else, these unfruitful branches that are connected for

a time, but taken away and wither and burn.

They are nominal or in name only Christians.

They have some kind of connection to the vine, but they're only connected to

Christ through external association.

So, a profession of faith, maybe church membership, but they're not truly,

inwardly, vitally connected to Christ in such a way that they're drawing life from Him.

They have an outward appearance of faith, but not a true and living, genuine faith.

And the Bible has a category for these people. We've already come into this

some in the gospel of John.

In 1 John 2.19, John writes, They went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

What is John talking about there?

He's talking about what theologians have called the perseverance of the saints.

It's the doctrine of perseverance. It's to say that anyone who's truly,

vitally united to Jesus has his

life flowing into them, and they will persevere in the faith to the end.

What John is saying in this verse in 1 John 2.19 is that if they had been of

us, if they had been truly Christians, they wouldn't have gone away.

They wouldn't have left.

They would have continued.

So that's what happens with these branches. They're not truly united to Christ

or they would have remained with him, but they fall away from Christ because

they were never vitally connected.

So that's the first kind of branches, the unfruitful branches that don't abide,

that are thrown away and burned. Now look at what Jesus says about fruitful branches.

And he says in verse two, second part of it.

So let me read the whole verse. 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.

Okay. So the father is the vine dresser. He said in verse one,

I'm the true vine and my father is the vine dresser.

What Jesus is teaching here is that those branches that do bear fruit,

The father works in their lives in such a way to prune them.

He works in their lives in such a way that they will bear more fruit.

The father's desire is that we would be as fruitful as possible.

And so he prunes us the way that a vine dresser prunes branches.

A vine dresser takes away the dead parts or the less fruitful parts of a branch.

Why? So that it's eliminating those parts of the branch that are taking water

and nutrients away from the fruitful parts of the branch.

But also a vine dresser shortens branches so that it remains closer to the trunk or to the vine,

and can thicken and actually bear more weight so that it can hold more fruit.

So the Father works in our lives to cut, to snip, to prune, to keep us closer

to the vine, to Jesus, so that we can actually bear the weight of more fruit.

Pruning requires cutting, and so it can be painful.

Hebrews 12, 11 says, For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than

pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

In the moment, none of us enjoy the feeling of being pruned or being disciplined.

But unless we are pruned, we will not bear the fruit that we were designed to produce.

So the father does his skillful work in our lives. He never prunes us unnecessarily.

Every cut is purposeful.

Next, we see that these fruitful branches are already clean in verse three.

Already you are clean because of the word I've spoken to you.

That word, I got this from John Piper on this passage. He says that word clean,

and the word prune in the Greek are almost the same word. They're very, very similar words.

And so if we were reading this in the original Greek, we would see that a lot clearer.

And the point is that to be clean is a very similar thing to being pruned.

If I said, I'm going to go clean out the debris in my backyard,

what I'm saying is I'm going to get rid of the stuff that's not good so that

what is there can be more useful, right?

And the same is true with pruning. You're clearing away what's not good,

what's dead, what's not bearing fruit so that what is there can be more fruitful, more useful.

And so so Jesus is is telling them look you're already clean you are already

ready to bear fruit you're you are ready,

in in a sense you you are ready to start bearing fruit he said the same thing back in 1310,

when he's washing their feet he says you are clean but not all of you because

remember Judas is still with him at that point,

but he says, you are clean.

So a person must be clean already or already clean in order to bear fruit.

Look at that verse again in verse three, already you are clean.

And then how do they become clean? Because of the word that I've spoken to you.

So the word that Jesus has spoken to them is his entire message.

It's the message of his entire life, that he is the eternal son of God,

that he has come to live the life,

that they couldn't live, to fulfill all righteousness, to die in their place

on the cross, to take their sin upon themselves and to be raised from the dead.

They are already clean because of the words that he has spoken to them.

If we believe that, if we cling to that and we bet our lives on that,

then we are already clean because of the word that he's spoken to us.

We are already prepared to begin bearing fruit.

So what have we seen so far? We've seen that Jesus is the vine,

that he is our all-sufficient source for life and fruitfulness.

We've seen there are unfruitful branches who are gonna be taken away that will

wither until the final judgment.

And then we've seen there are fruitful branches who are pruned by the Father

and cleansed by the word of the gospel made useful to the vine.

Now we need to see that branches exist for the vine. And the purpose of a branch is to bear fruit.

So let's look at the fruit that the vine produces through its branches.

I'm going to cover this hopefully pretty quickly because I want to spend a good

bit of time on our last point.

So what is the fruit that we're to bear in our lives?

It could be boiled down to obedience and Christ-like character.

So really briefly, the first thing that we see, just taking this all in context,

Jesus has been talking to them in chapter 14 about obeying,

his commandments, that loving him produces obedience to his commandments.

And then even in this passage, verses 10 through 14 are all about obedience.

So the fruit that grows in our lives as a result of abiding in Jesus is first of all, obedience.

And one reason that's so encouraging is because fruit, you know,

we might think of this the way in our American mindset, we might think of this

as like being productive, right?

You gotta be productive in order to bear fruit. But what this is saying is actually

just the act of obedience itself is fruit.

In other words, you know, just to use one example, if you go and you share the

gospel, you faithfully, you know, maybe you share your testimony or you share

the gospel with a neighbor or a coworker or a family member.

The fruit from that isn't how they respond to it.

That's completely up to the Lord. You're bearing fruit just by obeying, right?

So obedience is fruit.

Second thing is, as we abide in Jesus, more and more of him flows into us and

we find ourselves truly changing.

It's not overnight, right? And sometimes it's painfully slow, but over time,

as we abide in Jesus, we do see ourselves beginning to take on more and more

of his characteristics, his nature.

We begin to bear the fruit of the spirit. Maybe you're familiar with that verse

in Galatians 5, that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Some of us memorize that as kids or have a song that we have sung to our kids.

And so what that means is that the character of Jesus begins to come out of

us. When we were, where we were once self-indulgent, we start to see ourselves grow in self-control.

Where we might've once been inconsistent, we see ourselves grow in faithfulness.

Where we once were drawn to and loved darkness, we begin to love what is good.

Where we were once prone to harshness, we begin to grow in gentleness.

Annoyance with people gives way to kindness. Anxiety becomes less frequent and

we begin to have the peace of Christ grow in our hearts.

Instead of a disposition of sadness or despondency, joy begins to characterize our disposition.

Where we were once self-focused, we learn to love and serve others.

And that final one that I just said, which is the first fruit of the spirit,

love, that's where we really, we should start.

If we want to measure whether or not Christ is changing us, whether or not his

character is becoming our character.

When we first come to know Jesus, we are, the Bible says we are infants in Christ. We're babies.

We're children and we have to grow up. And if you have had children or been

around children, you know, and I don't have to tell you that little children are selfish.

They are selfish.

And if you summarize just all of the sin struggles of a little child,

they all could be summarized right there.

And the truth is, and we all know this, if we examine ourselves,

that could summarize pretty much all of our struggles too, right?

We are selfish.

And the first fruit of the Spirit is love.

It is the opposite of selfishness.

In John 15, 12 and 13, he says here, this is my commandment,

that you love one another as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends.

And look at how he summarizes this passage in verse 17 at the end.

These things I command you so that you will love one another.

As we grow in the vine, this ought to become more and more true of us,

that we sacrificially want to,

love other people, because that's what's true of Jesus.

We'll be less like children, less self-focused, self-absorbed,

and we will grow up into the mature manhood.

And that means thinking about and being focused on other people instead of ourselves.

So that's the fruit, okay? It's obedience and it's Christ-like character.

And now let's finish by looking at the connection.

Because, I mean, if we miss this, we kind of have missed the whole This is really

the point of this entire teaching, that if we don't remain connected.

We can't live, we can't grow, we can't bear fruit. So connection or abiding in the vine is vital.

That word abiding, it does mean to remain in or to be at home in the vine.

It is pointing us to something on the ground level, like in your daily life,

in your weekly life. And that's what I want to focus on.

And we could summarize it by saying it's pointing us to communion with Christ.

And that's because Jesus is not an idea. He is a person.

He wants relationship. He longs to interact with us.

And so that requires communion. So what do we learn from this passage?

Well, abiding, communing, being connected to him.

First of all, it means recognizing our dependence. I mean, look at verse five.

He says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

Nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing. That means apart from Jesus working

in us and through us, we can do nothing of any lasting value.

We need him that desperately. So at the very bare minimum, what we have to understand

is how dependent we are upon him.

That means that we We cling to him. We trust him for everything in every moment.

Colossians 2, 6-7 says, Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord,

so walk in him. How did we receive Christ Jesus the Lord? We trusted him. We put our faith in him.

So as you received him, keep walking in him. Continue trusting in him.

This is, I feel like I just have to say this plainly. This is a conscious thing.

We have a tendency to think like, this is just kind of happening without us

having to think about it. But Jesus doesn't command something of us,

requires no response, right?

So anything that he commands of you requires a response from you.

And so abiding in Jesus isn't automatic.

It requires a conscious dependence. And so here's, as I've been thinking about

this this week, I mean, here's why this is hard for us.

We live in an unbelievably distracting world.

I mean, we have our phones and we can go to them all the time.

We can endlessly scroll. We can ask AI a question that's going to give us some

amazing sounding answer.

We have TVs and computers to distract us. We have just full schedules, right?

And the challenge for us is just to even be conscious of Christ, isn't it?

Isn't it? I mean, we might even begin our day with time focused on Him and in

the Word, and it's so easy to just get going about our day and move on and forget about the Lord.

But in order to depend on Him, we must slow down. We must learn how to be present

in the moment with Jesus.

Because if we can't focus our mind on the Lord, We can't, we can't depend on

him. We can't abide apart from him. We can do nothing. So that's the first thing.

Second thing, look at verse seven.

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

So abiding in Jesus requires having the words of Jesus abiding in us.

Remember, we cannot separate the person of Christ from the words of Christ.

And Jesus has already said back in John 8, 31, if you abide in my word,

you are truly my disciples.

You abide in my word. So we cannot live apart from his word and still have a

vital connection to him. It's not possible.

We need his word. We need his words abiding in us. If you abide in me and my words abide in you.

So what would that look like to have the words of Christ abiding in us?

Well, Colossians 3.16 is helpful. I love this verse.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another

in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

So, I mean, this tells us what it would look like. If the word of Christ is

dwelling in you, what's going to happen? It's going to spill out of your mouth.

I mean, Jesus has already said that what's in the heart comes out of your mouth, right?

What's in the heart, the mouth speaks. Your mouth, think about it like this,

is like a pressure valve, pressure relief valve for your heart.

So if words of anger come out of your mouth, that's because there's anger in

your heart, right? Frustrated words come out of your mouth, that's because there's

frustration in your heart.

If encouraging words come out of your mouth, that's because there's encouragement in your heart.

And if the word of Christ is filling your heart, then it will naturally spill

out to one another, to others, right?

To give them wisdom, it will spill out of your mouth in songs,

hymns, spiritual songs. It will spill out of your mouth in thankfulness,

in your prayers to the Lord.

So that's what it looks like. But how does it get in there? Well.

I think, first of all, we know we need to read the word.

You need to take the word in, right? What you take in determines what's in your heart.

So we need to read the word. But I think the word, if my words abide in you,

it's hinting at something a little bit more than just a cursory reading of scripture.

And the same thing in Colossians 3, 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you

richly. And the word dwell and abide are actually very, very similar words.

They both mean to be at home in.

So if my words are at home in you or let the word of Christ be at home in you

richly, it's saying that it's more than just, I read my Bible, right? I read it.

There's something more required there. And I think that the scripture would

say what that is, is the process of meditation.

There are numerous places in the Bible where we're commanded to meditate on

scripture. A couple of them, Joshua 1.8, this book of the law shall not depart

from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.

And then we heard in our pastoral prayer, Psalm 1, that the blessed person delights

in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night.

Meditation is the act of fixing your mind on something you've read or studied

in the Bible and not letting it go until it's become more clear and useful to you.

Psalm 119.15 says, I will meditate on all your, on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways.

You're fixing your attention. You're fixing your mind on a particular truth

or story or illustration in scripture.

The Puritans were very committed to this discipline of scripture meditation.

What they would say about it is that reading the Bible, studying the Bible is like eating the meal.

And you've got to do that, right? You've got to read the Bible to start with.

You need to do that. You got to eat the meal. Meditation is like digesting the

meal and you have to do both.

But unless you, you know, You can eat the meal and immediately feel satisfied

and it's good, right? You satisfy that craving, that hunger,

but unless you can digest it, that food doesn't really become useful to you.

It's not until it's broken down that your body can turn its nutrients into what it needs.

So meditation is like that. It's taking what you've initially taken in through

reading and study and it's making it truly useful in your life.

And we desperately need that if we're going to have his words abide in us.

So on the ground level, abiding in order to bear fruit, it looks like communion

with Christ in the form of conscious dependence.

Scripture, reading and meditation, and then finally, prayer.

And I don't have to belabor this. I preached a sermon on this a couple of weeks ago.

But the point is that in verse seven, he says, if you abide in me and my words

abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

And then in verse 16, he comes back to it again.

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.

The point is that if we are a Christian, we are chosen fruit bearers through prayer.

I mean, that's what Jesus is saying there in verse 7 and 16.

And so a prayerless life will be a fruitless life. We must ask in order for it to be given.

And so if we want Christ-like character, if we want to grow in obedience,

then we need to ask for the Lord to produce that fruit in and through us, and he will give it.

So how do we abide in Christ? We remain consciously dependent on him.

We let his word be at home in us, richly. We dwell in us and we pray. That's it.

That's the plan. Notice none of these are things that you're doing for Jesus.

They're all ways that you receive from Jesus.

So remember the phone illustration. The phone's not doing anything to charge

itself. It simply needs to sit on the charger or be plugged into the charger

in order to be replenished.

So don't leave here thinking, I need to go and try harder to be a better Christian.

That's not the point of this message. You need to leave thinking,

I need Jesus for everything.

So I'd better stay connected to him so he can do his work, the work that he

does naturally through me. A branch doesn't strain to produce fruit, right?

It just stays connected to the vine and the life of the vine flows through it

and produces fruit through the branch.

So when you're weak, abide in him. When you're anxious, abide in him.

When you're tempted, abide in him.

When you're discouraged, abide in him.

When you feel like you're at the end of your rope, abide in him.

Come to him in faith, meditate on his word, talk to him in prayer.

Because Jesus told us apart from him, we can do nothing.

But the good news is we don't have to live apart from him.

When we abide in him, he will bear his fruit through us and the father will

be glorified. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for these reminders today.

Would you help us to abide in you, to stay connected to you in communion with you?

What a simple truth to grasp. What a hard thing for us to actually live out.

And so lord we ask for your help we ask that you would help us to,

to feel our need for you and to turn to you and and to stay connected to you,

to have an interactive vital living connection with you lord so that you can transform us,

so that you can use us so that you can bear fruit through us,

we ask it in jesus name amen.