Turn to John 15, 1 through 11, where we continue to consider the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this time through the very words of Jesus, our Savior. This is our final sermon, the seventh one in the book of John. The first one was on Exodus 3 about God being Yahweh, the great I am, I am who I am. And now we come to the final I am statement, in which Jesus says he is the vine. John 15, 1 through 11. Hear now the reading of God's word. 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 bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, I have also 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 so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Really fascinating in light of the myriad of news sources available to us today, that a little over a century ago, newspapers were said to comfort the tormented and torment the comfortable. Instead of news outlets catering to their fan base and kind of illustrating their biases on a daily basis. Newspapers were said to be comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable, or to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable. And a number of pastors, since this has been said of newspaper, have thought of their job as being those who comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. In a peculiar way, that's exactly what our text today does. It has a way of afflicting the comfortable and the complacent, but being of tremendous comfort to those who are afflicted and downtrodden and feeling the weight of this life and their own sin. So the two ways we'll look at this great I am statement of Jesus Christ, affliction for the comfortable and then comfort for the afflicted. And it really is, I'm not sure, affliction is quite the right word, but at least unsettling, maybe even alarming to those who are complacent about their standing and comfortable with who they are apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. In verse two of chapter 15, Jesus says directly, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And then in. Verse 6, if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. And we know scriptures language. We know Jesus is language about hell and destruction and fire, eternal fire, a second death. And we get the point here. prunes you out of the living vine, out of Christ himself. If you are cut off, then you are thrown away, cast away. And it is his right as a holy judge to take this pruning effort to the living vine who is his son, the great I am. to kind of drive that home more and make it even uncomfortable for any who are complacent and comfortable in their own apart from Jesus Christ. We know this takes place very close to the time when Judas betrays the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is still no greater example of an apostate of someone who is pruned out than Judas, who saw the Lord Jesus, who worshiped, so to speak, at his feet, listened to his preaching, listened to his teaching, saw his very miracles, knew Jesus up close and personal, spoke to him face to face, and yet betrayed him, sold him out, turned his back on him, left and then died by committing suicide, just the picture of absolute despair, no request for forgiveness, no humility, but self-destruction for Judas. And it is alarming and uncomfortable, even afflictive, to stop and think about these things that Jesus calls our attention to and what's more he doesn't even just speak about fruit he speaks about much fruit and if you think about a vine and Grapes on a fruitful vine you realize that yeah, it's abundance not just one or two grapes but clusters groups and groups of grapes that grow on a vine and it is unsettling it if you're complacent if you're indifferent to the things of God if you think you have a righteousness in yourself, or the way we would say it in our day and age, I'm a pretty good person. You should be rattled by this. You should be unnerved. This should get your attention. This should be alarming. Christ is saying, even if you worship alongside those of the true vine, God is the vinedresser. God the Father prunes this living vine. And there is fire and destruction for any who are removed from the living vine, affliction for the comfortable. And I think this takes place in two different ways. One is kind of. just an indifference. And that's probably where most people are. I don't think people go around and say, well, I'm very self-righteous. I'm just so excessively good, like the Pharisees in the Old Testament. I've done all of these different things. I do deserve a place in heaven because of the life I've lived. I'm not sure that's the ethos of the day and age. I know it takes its shape and form. But instead, just an indifference. Why bother? What's the point of all of this? Why make so much about Jesus? Live and let live. Why do Christians have to be proselytes? Why are they always talking about the Lord Jesus Christ and the need to believe in him and that he died on the cross for sins? And it is for this reason. There is no spiritual life. There is no good life. There is no wholesome life. There is no holy life apart from him. Look what he says in verse five. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You know, it's the idea that Paul brings up later, Ephesians 2, you are dead in your trespasses and sin. What can a corpse do? What do you expect a corpse to do at a funeral? Nothing, nothing, complete inability. And it's saying if you're existing in yourself, if you're not conscious of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are not abiding in him, then you need to be alarmed. You need to be afflicted by this passage. You need to be transformed by it. You need to come to Jesus and trust in him. Then there's the other side, not the indifference, but the self-righteousness of the Pharisees sort of thing. And while this is certainly an issue in our culture, it is also really a tremendous issue in the church. It's so easy to read the scripture and reduce it to a list of do's and don'ts, and performance, and rituals, and activities that fill up your life, and then start to pin your identity to those things that you do, the different aspects of your Christian faith, the actions that you take. And pretty quickly, and we all know this because we're all too good at being self-righteous Pharisees, We begin to identify with what we do instead of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Instead of the vine, of which we're branches, we look at what we've done. We look at our fruit, which is mentioned in the passage and is a little bit tricky to deal with in the passage. We're supposed to bear fruit. We're even supposed to look at our fruit and say, hey, this is evidence of abiding in Jesus Christ. And yet, we're never supposed to look at our fruit and say that we are in some way self-righteous, that apart from Christ we're doing it. It's not in any way the idea that we're kind of saved by grace and brought into the Christian faith, but then make our way to heaven through our own efforts and work. That is just nowhere taught in scripture, and it's certainly not taught here. And there's a helpful illustration that a number of pastors have made, and I think you children will enjoy it. But you just stop and think about what Jesus is speaking here, a vine, a plant, that produces fruit. And if you think about it, there's kind of two ways to come up with a vine that has fruit, let's say. A vine that produces fruit, or a fruit tree that has fruit. One is the way that's spoken of here as a metaphor, used as an illustration. You plant a seed, it grows into a vine, and it bears fruit in time. Or you could take a vine and then kind of staple fruit to it, right? Like take a grape and put a staple into the branch and then another grape and stick that one into the branch and you would have a fruit vine. You'd have a vine with fruit on it. And the illustration is so helpful because you know that's absurd. You know that that would be dead fruit and a dead vine. that it wouldn't do anything but ultimately stink and turn to rot. And that's the idea. If you're abiding in Christ, if you're a branch of which he is ultimately the vine, you bear real fruit in time. And it's interesting that good vines, good grape vines, take so long to really produce a good vintage, a good set of grapes. It takes a while. It takes a long time. But it's organic. It's connected to the living vine. And that's what's spoken of here. But don't give any thought. Don't fall into that idea of like stapling the fruit on the branches. Righteousness, by your own efforts, apart from the Lord, Jesus Christ, if this passage is teaching anything, it's teaching that your union with Christ is absolutely essential to bearing the sort of fruit that Jesus Christ is talking about here. And for that reason, really, this passage is primarily comfort for the affliction, not affliction for the comfortable. So we'll cross into that point, but first The idea of a vine is very similar to the idea of a fig tree. And it's significant because throughout the Old Testament, Israel, the children of Israel, are often referred to as a vine, meant to produce fruit, or a fig tree, meant to produce figs. And of course, you remember that Jesus cursed the fig tree because it wouldn't bear fruit. That was a picture of Israel. Well, when Jesus says, I am the true vine, He's saying, I know what the Old Testament prophet said. I know it's written in Jeremiah, where God says, I planted you a choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine? Shall I not punish them for these things, declares the Lord? Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this? Go up through her vine rows and destroy but make not a full end. Strip away her branches, prune the vine, for they are not the Lord's. When I would gather them, declares the Lord, there are no grapes on the vine, a fruitless vine, nor figs on the fig tree. Even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them." And Jesus is saying, I know what's written in the prophets. I know the failure. of Old Testament Israel. I know that repeated pattern throughout the Old Testament that God does something amazing, saves his people, delivers them from the house of bondage, and they thrive for just a short time and then turn back to different idols and turn back to different ways of apostasy. I know that is true of Old Testament Israel, that vine that ceased to bear fruit to the extent that the religious authorities of Israel are on the verge of putting their own Messiah to death on the cross. And Jesus is saying, I know the failure, the barrenness of the Old Testament vine, Israel. I am the true vine. I succeed where Israel has failed. I succeed where the first Adam failed. I am the true and living vine. I am the true vine. I am the vine. And you are the branches. And that's just tremendously encouraging, just from the outset, that you have Jesus saying, I'm the living vine. I'm perfection incarnate. I'm holiness incarnate. I'm obedience to the law incarnate. All the ways in which Israel failed throughout the Old Testament are now finally fulfilled by me, the true vine. And then he goes on to say, and you're the branches. And again, just think about a vine, even if you don't know all that much about agriculture. You know that when you look at a vine and branches, it's not like, oh, you know what? Right here, the vine ends and the branch begins. You know that's not the way it works. It's an integrated whole. It's an organic whole. It's one plant. So the illustration itself is magnificent in that it is saying, I am one with my people. I am a true vine. I've done what nobody else in the Old Testament did, what Israel hasn't done, what you haven't done. But you're the branches organically really truly united. to me." And that language is just over and over in this passage. It speaks about fruit four times, but it says, in me, five times. And then abide, 10 times. It's speaking about abiding. And what a beautiful word, kind of living, having your residence in the vine. Every part of your being being connected to organically, really, truly united to the living true vine without any failure, without any perfection, holy, harmless, and undefiled, abiding in him. And this is a little tangential, forgive me, but I think it's helpful. Isn't it interesting? Last Sunday, we looked at John, who says Jesus is the way. Luke, another author of the New Testament, tells us that in Acts, the Christians were first known as those who were of the way. Two different authors, right? And then here you have Jesus in John 15 saying, abide in me, in me. And of course, the Apostle Paul What's his favorite two words? In Christ. In Christ. In Christ. Over and over. Over 100 times he uses that term in his letters. And John, Luke, Paul, together, they wrote 70% of the New Testament. So it's just beautiful the way, in Christ, in me, the way they support one another, correspond. Different authors teaching the same thing through these passages. This idea of abiding in Christ in order to bear fruit, I know it can be uncomfortable because you think about Judas and every sensitive Christian stops and at every Lord's Supper says like, oh, but what if I'm Judas? And what if I had ultimately betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ and is unnerved by even passages like this that speak about bearing fruit and bearing much fruit and unnerved by even the thought of being pruned or cut off or tossed away. And what I want to say is if you're thinking along those lines, that is evidence that you're not to be gleaning from this alarm and hurt and set on edge and affliction, but instead you're to be gleaning from this comfort. You're to be coming to this and saying, It's not about me. I'm in the vine. I'm connected to the vine. I'm in union. I'm abiding in the true and living vine, the fulfillment of the Old Testament, the one who did all of these things perfectly. I'm a follower of the way. I'm in Christ. I'm abiding in him. And instead of Judas, just think about Peter. That's the difference between Judas. That's the only difference, really, between Judas and Peter. Peter didn't do something that was just, oh, so much better than Judas. Judas betrays Jesus, right? Well, Peter denies Jesus. After saying he wouldn't, after saying he would surely go to his death without denying Jesus, just hours later, denies Jesus with curse words, with cuss words. denounces Jesus, betrays Jesus in his own denying sort of way. The difference isn't in the action itself, but is because of God's grace that Peter was ultimately still connected in a living, vital union to Christ. And we're meant to look at that. This is just such a beautiful illustration with Peter, because at the end of the Gospel of John, they're all All the disciples, besides Judas, are in a boat, and they notice Jesus is there on the shore, but it's Peter who jumps out of the boat and swims to the shore to run to Jesus, even after having denied him. And that is meant for your comfort. Say, well, look at what I've done. I've done all sorts of terrible things, maybe even denied Jesus. run to him. He's the source of life. He's the way. He's the truth. He's the life. He's the vine. Apart from him, you could do nothing. So overcome whatever it is by turning to Jesus, running to him the way Peter did. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this passage is something that at first doesn't seem exciting at all. It's actually almost anticlimactic and disappointing. I am the true vine, verse 1 of chapter 15, and my father is the vine dresser. Okay. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. We've spoken about that. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes so that it may bear more fruit." Now, even the word pruning, it's just not attractive. You don't want to sign up for being pruned. Nobody ever put a list, a sign-up sheet out saying pruning, and then a person put his name under it. And if you think about what's involved with it, even with a vine, even if you don't know much about agriculture, it's cutting, right? Maybe even hacking at points. Chopping off. You know, you use something that's stronger and sharper than scissors, and you apply it to the vine. And when we're working with children, even if it is just scissors, be careful with those scissors. Don't hurt yourself with those scissors, right? But we're talking about clippers or shears applied to you. Pruning. And it's kind of a remarkable verse that throws you for a loop, because it's like, great, Jesus Christ is the vine. He's the true vine. He's so much better than Old Testament Israel. He's a success where all of them were failures. So what do we get? Pruning. God the Father's attention, hacking things off, cutting things off that shouldn't be there, carving, transforming you. Pruned by the Father. You know, here I think Again, you kind of come back to this idea that there's two ways to come up with a fruit tree. One would be to staple fruit to different dead branches and make a fake fruit tree. But here we see the real way, the organic way. And it does throw you for a loop, but it's so glorious. It's the sun. You're in union with the sun, united to the sun organically. And really, the way a vine is united to its branches, but God the Father is superintending all of that. There's no problem with the vine. It's the perfect son of God. But now you're one of the branches. So the father comes and the father assesses and he's the great vine dresser. He takes action, even if it means clipping, even if it means shearing. And he goes about that work. And the result is not just fruit, but more fruit. And doesn't that have so much more warmth and beauty to it than just saying, well, I am progressing in sanctification. That's the same idea, growing in holiness, producing more and more fruit. But this has every idea that the Father is intimately involved at every step, and it's because of your intimate union and relationship with Jesus Christ the Son. And when we think about fruit, we can't help but think of Galatians 5, and the fruit of the Spirit, And we just realized this is what's going on. Before being united to Christ, before being engrafted into the Lord Jesus Christ, before becoming a branch of which he is divine, our works were evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, all of those terrible, wicked things. were what identified you. You couldn't escape them. And that's so helpful to keep as the backdrop, the fruitless backdrop, before you go charging into the fruit of the Spirit, fruit and more fruit from God's work, from his engrafting of you into Jesus Christ the Son, to his ongoing pruning efforts. Because whether it's you, or King David, or Noah, or denying Peter the truth is, there is fruit of the Spirit occurring in your life. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, all these things against which there is no law, all these things that are just good to cultivate, that even the world would look at and say, yes, run in that direction, grow in that direction, But the point is they're not stapled on fruit. They are coming out of you organically. They cannot help but to grow in you because you're united to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want to say the same thing in two different ways. One's a little bit more technical, and another way is something children and parents can both appreciate. We have a way of looking at something like the fruit of the spirit. and instantly jumping to the perfect expression of those things, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. And that's appropriate, because that's Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect patience, perfect kindness. He doesn't alter from it, even in his mind, never did at a single moment. That's truth. When we come to us, not Christ, but Christians, we need to look at Paul's backdrop and realize we came out of something called total depravity, total darkness, the works of the flesh, impurity, sensuality, that whole list. So that when we see even the slightest evidence of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control, we give God the glory for it. We say, thank God, he's taken what was rotten and broken, a dead branch that should be thrown into hell to burn forever. He's taken that. He's brought it into himself. It's a living branch, and it is producing fruit, even if it's not as fast as I'd like it to be. And think about a vine growing grapes. You don't see the grapes grow. You don't even see the vine grow. It's imperceptible to the human eye, but it's happening to the extent that you can pick great clusters of grapes. And here's the two illustrations. First, we think about Jesus Christ and the Christian faith on a scale from 1 to 10. Jesus Christ is a 10. The worst sinners is a 1. And us Christians who have lived as Christians for a little while, we're like a 5 or 6 on the measurement there. 1 to 10, Christ is the best. 1 is the worst. If you're a Christian for a little bit, you're a 5. You're a 6. If you read your Bible every day and read through it every year, maybe you're a 7. The scale is wrong. Think of a scale of one is on that wall, 10,000 is on that wall. Christ is a 10,000. None of us are beyond here on the scale of holiness, not at all. That's Christ over there, perfect in thought, word, and strength. All of us, we're progressing in holiness, but there is so far to go before we arrive at complete perfection in the Lord Jesus Christ. But here's the other illustration from God's perspective. And I love this, and I realized it with my own children. You know, when you see a child take his first step, no parent ever looked at their child taking their first step, whether it's one, or 12 months, or nine months, or whatever, and said, son, you're doing it all wrong. That's terrible. I've never seen such a bad first step in my life. Don't you see everybody else how they walk around? They're not stumbling. What are you doing? No, it's, wow, they're walking. Put it on Facebook. Put it on Instagram. Take a video. Save it so we could show it to them. They're really doing it. Jesus looks and says, look who is bearing fruit. Peter, the denier. You, whatever your circumstances, whatever your difficulties, whatever your trials, and this idea of pruning becomes such a tremendous encouragement. Instead of saying, oh, I'm doing it all wrong, I'm a terrible Christian because the Christian life is just so difficult, you say, yeah. Pruning is difficult. It doesn't even sound good. I wouldn't sign up for it. I don't ask for it. And as I look back on my own life and the way things have gone and dips and turns and peaks and valleys, there's stuff I would never want to go through again. But I now see was the pruning of my loving God and Father because I am a living branch united to the great I am, the vine." I'm not sure anybody says it better, so sorry for another C.S. Lewis quote. But he says, imagine yourself as a living house. Living house, living vine, both illustrations in the New Testament. Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what he is doing. He's getting the drains right. He's stopping the leaks in the roof, and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing, and so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building Quite a different house from the one you thought of. He's throwing out a new wing here. He's putting on an extra floor there. He's running up towers. He's making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but he's building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. You see how that ties so many different strands of the New Testament together? Christ in you, you in him, being a living house, being a living branch, intimately, really, truly united to Jesus Christ with the great vine dresser, God the Father, pruning you to bear ever more fruit. That's all tremendous comfort. for the afflicted, but it actually gets better even in the text before us. Look at verse 3. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. You're already clean. In a sense, you're already pruned or you're already a part of this living vine that will never be cast away. If you're trusting in the Lord Jesus, if you're taking him at his word, he says, I have this word that I have spoken to him. You all those who come to Jesus will in no way be cast out. Knock on the door. Those who seek find. He says you're already clean or you're already pruned because of the word which I've spoken to you. Trust him, believe him. delight in him, see affliction, despair, doubt, difficulty, trials, all of those things as the pruning of your father, but keep calling him father and holding to the word of the son. And then verse 11. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full. And even in the original language, there's just a remarkable double entendre. Is Jesus saying, my joy, in the sense that the joy of Jesus himself is operating within you? Or is he saying, my joy, in the sense that you are my joy? which is the way Paul uses that idea in 1 Thessalonians 2, saying, you are our joy and our crown. And I think it's an intentional double entendre. I think Jesus is saying, you're united to me. You trust my word. God the Father is the vinedresser. He's pruning you. So you know something of my joy within you. You know it's operative within your heart, the same joy that animated me as a person. living to the glory of God the Father, even undergoing trial and affliction in the cross, that joy is operative in you. But I think he's also saying, and you are my joy. I see why I'm laboring. I see why I'm living here. I see why I incarnated as the Son of God and the Son of Man. I see why I'm laying down my life for the sheep. You're my joy. For the joy set before him. He endured the cross, despising the shame. He looked to the church. He looked to the people of it. He looked to what he would accomplish for all eternity. He looked to you this day, the branches of the vine, not only of his flock back then, but the flock that were not of that fold, all those who in every place at all times would call upon the name of the Lord. Now take this imagery that he gives us. I am the vine. You are the branches. Same thing Paul says, right? Only he says, we are the body, he's the head. What a thought. 5099 Postal 8 Road, Columbus, Ohio, 43235. The street address of this church is the street address of Jesus Christ. Want to see the branches of which he's a vine? The vine. Want to see the body of which he is the head? Want to see the living stones that make up the house of which he is the chief cornerstone? Want to see the joy that was set before him that enabled him to despise the shame of the cross? Come to 5099 Postolate Road. Visit Grace OPC. only one of the street addresses, but nonetheless a street address where you can see the branches of the vine, the living stones on the chief cornerstone, the members of the body with him as the head, those living in this union with him. He is the vine. You are the branches. And now we can appreciate why he says, I am the vine. Right? Old Testament, Exodus 3, burning bush, transcendent God, fountain of all being, beyond all of our thoughts and imaginations, says these remarkable things. Here I am. I am with you. I am who I am. Nothing is dependent on me. I'm completely transcendent, different, and other than all of you contingent beings. And yet, I'm speaking to you, Moses. You have the angel of the Lord. You have my presence. New Testament. the incarnation, God's presence, in an unheard of, unthought of way. But now we're even beyond that. And Jesus is saying, it's not just me in the flesh. You're in me. I'm in you. The street address of the church shows the branches of the vine, the members of the body of which Christ is head, and the joy that was set before him, enabling him to endure the cross and despise the shame. Trust in his word. Never try to live apart from the living vine. Trust in him, partake of him, come into union with him. If you're not sure of how to do that, speak to me or one of the elders. Abide in him. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word and pray that this would thrill us and encourage us to reach out to people we don't even know yet. and bring them into union with you by your grace and power. We pray that this would really transform how we think about the church itself, that we would realize how radically different this is than any organization of mere men. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.