The Gospel of John
Pastor Ron W. Hammer
1/10/99
Where’s the Fruit?
John 15:1-11
Introduction
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have dinner with Jesus? To sit and enjoy an unhurried evening of conversation and fellowship with your Lord. Wouldn't that be a wonderful experience?
This week Debbie and I had the chance to sit and fellowship with a good friend over supper. We sat and chatted for nearly 3 hours and when we finally needed to get home to relieve the babysitter, it seemed as if it had only been a short while.
Good fellowship is like that. But if that is what we can experience in an earthly friendship, imagine what an evening with Jesus could be like. But, did you realize that the invitation for such an evening, an evening that can last a lifetime, is open to all of us. Jesus once said:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me." (Revelation 3:20 NKJV)
We often make the mistake of thinking of these words as a "simple gospel invitation." In reality, Jesus is speaking to a Christian Church, and in His words we see an invitation that is clearly open to all believers in Him.
But, perhaps the most shocking aspect of this lovely invitation is that it was made to a church that was struggling. It was written to a church that, as Zane Hodges says, "...is famous for its character as a lukewarm congregation. That state of affairs," Hodges continues, "should not surprise us. ...repeatedly ... the New Testament writers faced squarely the reality of believers living below the standards God had set for them. And by facing this reality, they sought to alter or prevent it."
So Jesus addressed a group of lukewarm believers who were materially wealthy but spiritually poor and He told them that He was patiently waiting at the door, gently knocking, longing for them to open the door and experience a renewal of true fellowship with Him.
This was a church that should have been a testimony for the Lord. A church that should have been, as all churches should be, the mouthpiece of God in their community. But instead, they had become virtually worthless. They were in need of correction and so Jesus said to them:
(Revelation 3:19 NKJV) "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent.
Jesus warned them that if they did not turn around, He would be forced to bring rebuke and chastening.
As Hodges says, "He stood ... on the threshold of their lives. With His rebukes He spoke to them, and with His discipline He knocked on the door of their hearts. But it was up to them to respond. It was for them to open the door to Him. And if they did, He would dine with them and they would dine with Him. But the choice was theirs. He would not break down their door."
This is precisely the issue that Jesus addresses with his eleven disciples just hours before his arrest. In John 15, Jesus calls His disciples to stay in fellowship with Him. As we saw last week, John 15, most likely begins as Jesus and the eleven arrive at the Mount of Olives, filled with its many vineyards and orchards. As is often the case, Jesus molds his teaching around His physical setting and so He uses the grapevines that are before Him as a picture of the relationship He desires His disciples to have with Him.
And so we began to look at this metaphor that Jesus uses of the vine and the branches to show us what it means to remain in close contact with Jesus and thus become a PRODUCTIVE CHRISTIAN.
Review:
1. The Vine: JESUS
(John 15:1a) "I am the true vine…".
2. The Vinedresser: GOD, THE FATHER
(John 15:1b) "…My Father is the vinedresser."
2. The Branch: BELIEVERS
Abiding in Jesus:
a. The Principle (:2)
(John 15:2 NKJV) "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away [lifts up - or attaches to the trelise]; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
God prunes the fruit bearing branch to maximize its productivity
God trains (lifts up) the non-bearing branch to prepare it for fruit bearing in the future.
b. The Response (:3-5)
(John 15:3-5 NKJV) "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Continued fruit bearing can only occur when the branch remains attached to the vine.
That brings us to where we left off last week.
c. The Removal (:6)
(John 15:6 NKJV) "If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
In the first five verses, Jesus has described what happens when a believer abides in the Lord and then He has challenged the disciples to continue to do so. But what would happen if they didn't? And, Jesus' very words clearly imply that it was possible for the disciples to fail to abide - the structure of the questions in v. 6 & 7 make it clear that failure to abide was a possibility for the disciples!
Anyone who is honest with themselves will affirm that this is the case. We all experience times when we wander in our walk with the Lord. I know that in my own experience I have seen this to be true.
Early years - running hot and cold…
Are those times behind me? Yes and no. I don't have the long periods of not "abiding" - but I still experience periods of time when I don't allow the Lord to have His rightful place in my life. When I take control and fail to depend on the Lord.
There are two keys that are essential in correctly understanding this verse:
Don't misunderstand the relationship to verse 2.
Don't be misled by the reference to "fire".
These are difficult words, they refer to the branch that is no longer attached to the vine. This is different from the pruning of v. 2 - that was a reference to the Spring pruning for enhanced fruitfulness. In verse 2 the pruning primarily referred to the removal of small succulents and other extraneous growth that would hinder maximum fruit production. The most obvious reason that verse 6 cannot be referring to this same pruning is because this spring pruning doesn't yield anything that would really be fit for burning. As Gary Derickson describes: Sprigs cleaned from the vines in the spring would be too small and succulent to do more than wither away. They would not have enough wood to form a pile and make a fire…Even a two foot sprout would wither to practically nothing in the spring. To build a fire as described in verse 6, mature wood would have to be removed. This happens in the severe pruning at the beginning of the dormant season after all fruit has been harvested, and all branches look alike. It happens to fruitful as well as unfruitful branches.
The point of this verse is that a branch that is not connected to the vine has become useless. When a branch has been severed from the vine it no longer can fulfill its purpose - it cannot bear fruit. Now here is where we sometimes can try and take this metaphor too far. Jesus isn't representing the life cycle of the vine as the perfect picture of the Christian life. He simply takes two principles of the growing cycle and uses them to illustrate two principles of the Christian life:
Branches that are abiding or remaining in Jesus are either pruned to allow maximum fruitfulness or trained for future fruitfulness.
And second, when a branch ceases to abide or remain in Jesus it becomes useless in this life!
One of the problems that we have in understanding this verse is that we tend to focus on the fire and the burning. For many of us we see fire and we think hell! But as Hodges says, there is not reason to make that interpretive leap: There is no reason at all to think of the fire as literal, just as we are not dealing with a literal vine, literal branches, or literal fruit. "Fire" here is simply another figurative element in the horticultural metaphor.
This was the practice of the day. The gardener would cut back the vine in the Fall, throw the branches over the vineyard's short mud walls, where someone would then collect them up and burn them. Why were they burned? Was it because they were bad vines? No! They were useless. In fact, the practice of burning the prunings continued even to recent times. It is no longer done because now they take the pruned vines and make those grapevine wreaths and other things. They are no longer burned, because they are no longer useless.
Don't let that confuse you, my point is this: It is the uselessness of the vines that results in their burning!
This is not a unique concept in Scripture, either.
In 2 Peter 1, the apostle speaks of a Christian who doesn't have the qualities of Christian character and he describes this person as one who is "blind, cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins" in verse 9. This kind of faith becomes useless in this life and this kind of Christian is useless in the Lord's service.
In James 2, the Lord's half-brother speaks of a Christian who's faith is no longer vital and alive, and is not producing any works and James says this kind of faith is of no earthly good. This kind of faith is useless in this life and this kind of Christian is useless in the Lord's service.
In I Corinthians 3, the apostle Paul speaks of a person who's life is placed on the altar and burned and all of their works burn up and nothing remains and these people will lose their reward but will be "saved, yet so as through fire." These are believers who lived a life that was useless to the Savior. Their lives were focused on self. This kind of faith is useless in this life and this kind of Christian is useless in the Lord's service.
What about you? Could your faith be called "useless"? Do you have a lukewarm faith that is neither refreshing like a cool drink of water or comforting like a hot roaring fire? If so, the answer is to open the door. Jesus is knocking. He is patiently waiting for you to allow Him to have a significant place in your life. He wants to come in and dine with you and talk about your life and show you what it means to live for Him - to as Paul says, take hold of the life that is truly life (1 Tim 6:19).
And what are the results if you do? What can you expect if you choose to abide in Jesus? In 1 Cor 3:14, Paul says: If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. In verses 7-11, Jesus tells us what some of that reward will be.
d. The Reward: When you abide in Him you will experience:
God’s ANSWERS
(John 15:7 NKJV) "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
God’s GLORY
(John 15:8 NKJV) "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
God’s LOVE
(John 15:9-10 NKJV) "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 "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.
God’s JOY
(John 15:11 NKJV) "These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.
Conclusion
Of all the Biblical figures that mark the pages of Scripture, perhaps the most personal, the one to whom many of us can most closely relate, is Peter. I am awed by Paul and his zealous pursuit of Christ. His life challenges me. But in Peter I find a fellow struggler. In Peter I find a man who passionately loved Jesus, but who imperfectly followed Him. I can relate to that.
On the night of Jesus' arrest, Peter would run from one extreme to the other in his efforts to follow Christ. He would make bold proclamations of his loyalty to Jesus and hours later deny that He even knew Him. He would voice his willingness to die for Jesus and then hide in the shadows as His Lord was savagely beaten. He would step forward and bravely face an army of men with a small sword and then would be found at daybreak weeping over his cowardice.
(Luke 22:31-32 NKJV) And the Lord said, "Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. 32 "But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren."
(John 15:5 NKJV) "I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Jesus was saying: "Stay in Me, don't let your link with Me be broken!
(Luke 22:40 NKJV) When He came to the place, He said to them, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation."
(Luke 22:46 NKJV) Then He said to them, "Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation."
They were all warned, especially Peter. But they didn't heed the warning. As Hodges writes:
Contact with the True Vine is broken as Peter and the rest desert their teacher. How differently that night might have been for them if they had marched boldly at His side! But the branches were now severed from that True Vine and in their withered and weakened condition this is soon [obvious] in the events that take place next.
With skill the 'fire' of testing and temptation has been ignited by the Devil. As our Lord had foreseen, Satan sifts Peter…So severe, in fact, is the satanic assault that Peter's faith might not have survived the attack …But his Master's intercessory prayer was heard and his faith did not fail.
But Peter himself failed. In the process he denied His Lord three times. Yet by the grace of God, Peter was also restored. His tears of regret were indeed the first step in his "return" to Christ and to a renewed experience of abiding in the True Vine.
One of the places this metaphor of the vine falls short is that it cannot picture restoration. A severed and withered vine that has been cast aside as useless and burned cannot be restored to its place in the vine. But a Christian can. A believer who has stopped abiding can be restored to full fellowship with the Lord. Peter was restored and had a life of faithful service. The other 10 disciples were restored and they too went on to have fruitful lives.
Jesus says:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me." (Revelation 3:20 NKJV)
Will you let Him in?