Our scripture lesson is found in the gospel according to John chapter 15. I am the true vine, and my father is the husband man. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away. And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me. I am the vine, and ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what the Lord doeth, but I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you that ye love one another. Thus far we read the scriptures. The text we consider together tonight is found in verses 1 through 6 of this chapter. I'm not going to read it in its entirety again. It was on the bulletin. You could have read it yourself if you were interested. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, this too is part of our Lord's sermon marvelous sermon to his disciples on the eve of his suffering and death on the cross. As I mentioned to you last Thursday night, the disciples were overcome with sorrow that the Lord now had made it clear that he was going to leave them. They considered that to be the greatest tragedy that could possibly happen to them in their lives. The Lord is at great pains to tell them in this entire sermon that he is not going to leave them, even though he leaves this earth. I will come to you, he says, in more than one place. I will come to you by the spirit of truth. And the fact of the matter is, because I come to you, you are called upon to abide in me. And we could almost say, although that's not the text, you may and are called to abide with me, even though you think I am going away. That must have been of some surprise to the disciples. And so in order to make that clear, the Lord uses an extended metaphor of a grapevine and explains how that grapevine applies to the life of the people of God. I say at the very outset And I say it in all the earnestness of which I am capable, that the word of God to you tonight, the word of God which you must obey, is this, abide in Christ. If you do not, the dire punishment of which the text speaks will come upon you and your children. Call attention to this passage, therefore, under the theme, The True Vine and Its Branches. Notice, first of all, the identity that is of the vine and of the branches. Secondly, how God deals with a vine. And finally, the implied admonition. The Apostle John's gospel is a very profound and beautiful gospel. If there was one book of the Bible on which I would have loved to write a commentary, it would be on the gospel according to John. I never dared. I never dared because the gospel is so completely profound and has depths and wonders in its seemingly simple expressions that defy our boldest attempts to understand it. One characteristic of John which appeals to me so much and ought to appeal to you is that throughout his gospel narrative, he is always reaching back into the Old Testament He doesn't tell us he's doing that, and he doesn't make it explicit in the Gospel, but he was aware of the fact that the people for whom he was writing were sufficiently acquainted with the Old Testament that they would readily recognize the references to the Old Testament that he made. This is true of this passage as well. There are especially two places in the Old Testament where the nation of Israel is compared to a vine. One is Psalm 80. Psalm 80 speaks of Israel as a vine, although it speaks of God as their shepherd too, in another metaphor. But it speaks of Israel as a vine that God plucked out of Egypt, took care of in a waste, howling wilderness, and planted in the land of Canaan where it grew and flourished and brought forth fruit. Nevertheless, it was only for a time. And the last part of the psalm sings in doleful minor chords. of the destruction of the vine. The other passage, and again Jesus is referring to that too, is in Isaiah 5, where the prophet inspired by the Holy Spirit says, I will sing a song of my beloved. And he goes on to sing of the nation of Israel as a vineyard for which God cared. He not only cared for it, but he did everything that was necessary that it produce fruit, that the nation produce fruit. And yet, when he went to look for fruit, all he could find was weeds, fruitless vines. no fruit to be found. And he speaks there, emphatically, of the fact that the nation of Israel is that vine. So let's bear that in mind first of all. Historically, and in the context of Jesus' speech, Jesus' sermon, he is referring to the nation of Israel. In the second place, as far as the elements are concerned, we have them defined in verse 1. God, as is clear from Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5, is the husband man. He planted the vine. He tended the vine. He cared for the vine. He was the one who sought fruit from the vine, and in time found none. The vine itself, the main chunk and the root, is our Lord Jesus Christ. I am the true vine, Jesus says. He was that always. As a matter of fact, up until the nation crucified Christ and God cast them out of his sight, the nation survived in the most dreadfully wicked times because Christ was the root and the main trunk of the vine. And although In time, because of Israel's apostasy, seemingly the entire vine was destroyed. Nevertheless, the root remained. And that's why scripture calls Christ a root out of a dry ground. So Christ is the root and main trunk. As far as the branches are concerned, the branches here historically, as I said, are the nation of Israel, but if we would apply that to more modern times, to our own day and to the entire new dispensation, that whole vine, the branches especially, constitute the church. Israel was the church in the old dispensation, but the church in the new dispensation as well, not now Holland Protestant Reformed Church only, not now the denomination that goes under the name of Protestant Reformed Churches, but the whole church, modern Christendom, all that calls itself church, all that at one time in ages gone by believed the gospel, and confessed the truth. First in Palestine, then in Eastern Europe, then in Europe itself, then in America and Australia, the vine was planted and branches grew from it. And so you must consider that what Jesus is speaking of here is the whole Christian church. More importantly, and more importantly for us, Jesus is speaking here of the fact that God has always, as a matter of fundamental principle, gathered his church from believers and their seed. Or if I may put it a little differently, the branches here in this powerful metaphor are generations. Believing generations. Generations that sometimes have been in the vine for hundreds of years. I saw, for example, not that long ago, the genealogy of a family that is a member of one of our Protestant Reformed churches, whose lineage goes all the way back to the earliest days of the Reformation in the Netherlands in the mid-1500s. So you must not think of these branches as individuals. That would be a mistake. But you must think of these branches in terms of being generations. And that is crucial to an understanding of the text. Generations. generations of branches that remain in the vine, generations of branches that are cut off. Both are important. That truth undergirds the admonition, abide in the vine. You are not only determining your own destiny, but you are determining the destiny of your generations. When a branch is cut off, a branch is cut off in such a way that generations are cut off, and in fact, whole churches and whole denominations, as for example, the Presbyterian Church in the United States, are cut off from the vine. And you must not now, in pride, think to yourself, that will never happen to the Protestant Reformed churches. You better not think that. There have been too many denominations in the history of the Church of the New Dispensation that followed the sad history of Israel, and that were cut off. Now you understand, of course, that each branch brings forth other branches, because families have more than one child, and each new branch that grows from the original branch is also a generation. And when another branch, yet another branch, grows from that branch, it is another generation. Your children have their own children, and they have their children. And so it is in God's purpose. So that's the identity of the main elements in this metaphor. Now, the text is at great pains to explain to us how God deals with his vine. And the whole burden of the text, the whole burden of the metaphor can be understood only when you consider the church as an organism. Let me just say a few words about that. I know, and I know only too well, that one of the great differences between the Reformed faith and, say for example, the Baptist churches is this. Not necessarily, although that's part of it, not necessarily that the Baptist churches as a general rule are Arminian and the Reformed churches believe in sovereign grace. But there is another difference, significant and important and crucial, and that difference is this. The Reformed faith always deals with God's people organically, with the church organically. The church is not composed of hundreds and hundreds of individuals. The church is not a collection of people. The church is not a mob or a crowd. The church is always pictured in scripture as an organism. That's the whole idea of the scriptures. You know, that was even in a certain sense of the word in 1924 when our churches got started. Reverend Hoeksema and Reverend Danoff and Reverend Hopoff. developed that idea of an organism. It was to be found in Dort already, and if you read the canons carefully, you can detect that it was there. But the whole idea of the church as an organism was not made explicit until the beginning of the history of our churches, where the emphasis was placed on the church as an organism. If you read, for example, the book Sin and Grace, the emphasis there is exactly on demonstrating that the church is not made up of a bunch of individuals, but the church is an organism. And while I can't go into the meaning of that in detail tonight, let it be understood that when one member of that organism is defective or diseased, it affects the whole organism. Just like if I get a little cut in my finger and I get infection in it and that turns into blood poisoning because it isn't taken care of, can destroy my whole body. just a little cut in the tip of my finger. You cannot do anything or an individual member of the church cannot do anything without affecting the whole body. That's the nature of an organism, because in God's elective decree from all eternity, He made an organism in Christ, one body. That's why scripture uses the figure of the body as demonstrating the relationship between members in particular and all the members in their relationship to Christ. Families are an organism. Congregations are an organism. You're not the only pebble on the beach, you know. You're not acting for yourself when you act and do things. What you do affects the whole congregation. And that's true in families too. And so, the idea of an organism stands here on the foreground. Now, to get on with my second point, there are some branches that do not bear fruit. And Jesus concerns himself with those. in more than one text in these verses that I have chosen. They don't bear fruit. The point is, of course, that originally, who knows how many generations back, maybe only one, maybe two, there were people that were grafted into the vine because they were saved. They were the elect. They were to be brought into the organism. And they were brought into the organism in a wonderful way. And that way was this. They were grafted into Christ. That's how they were brought into the organism. Now I hope you all understand what it means to graft. I knew a man in our Redlands church, I think he is now in heaven, I'm sure he is, who knew how to graft. It's not an easy process. But he had a tree in his yard, I can't recall the kind of tree it was, but he had branches grafted into that tree from other kinds of trees. Now the interesting part of a graft is that that branch that is grafted into the main trunk of the tree or into one of the major branches gets its life out of that tree to which it is grafted. It doesn't have any life of its own. If you don't graft it into another tree, it'll die. But if you grafted in to another tree, the life of that tree will enter into the branch and become, make that branch a living branch. The unique thing is about it that although you have grafted into that tree a branch from a different kind, it'll still bear the same fruit that it always did. If, for example, you have an orange tree and you graft a lemon branch into the orange tree, that lemon branch will get its life out of the orange tree, but produce lemons, not oranges. And so when a believer, a child of God, an elect child of God is saved, He is grafted into Christ. Our Heidelberg Catechism speaks of that in Lord's Day 7. Are all men then as they perished in Adam saved in Christ? No, but only such as are grafted into him by a true and living faith. Faith is the bond, therefore, that unites the believer with Christ. I sometimes think, I know I have to be careful, but I sometimes think that faith is the most important gift that God gives to his people. There are many gifts of salvation, you know, justification, sanctification, conversion, so on and so forth. But I think faith is the most important because faith engrafts us into Christ. And when faith engrafts us into Christ, all the other blessings of salvation are ours because they all come out of Christ. Understand that? Even regeneration. The life of Christ is not given to us, except we be united to him, and the life of Christ flows into us, so that we become living, regenerated children of God. And so, the way we abide in Christ, and I might as well say that now already, until we get to our third point, The way to abide in Christ is to believe. Only I want to say a lot more about that, of course. Now, when a believer is grafted into Christ, an individual is not grafted into Christ, but generations that come forth from that individual when he marries and has children and grandchildren and so on and so forth. a new branch that produces other branches which in turn produce yet other branches and so on and so forth. When one is engrafted into Christ One brings forth fruit. If you consult, for example, our Heidelberg Catechism and its beautiful description of what is good works, it says right at the outset, good works are those that proceed from a true faith. The only possibility of doing good works is by the life of Christ, which becomes ours when we are grafted into him by faith. Now, the Lord says, there are branches that don't bring forth fruit. And that's the sad song of Isaiah 5 written in a minor key. When I looked for fruit, I found none, says the Lord. I did for that vineyard everything which it is possible for me to do, but when I looked for fruit, I found none." In other words, first of all, of course, and fundamentally, election, divine election, is in the line of generations. Reprobation is also in the line of generations. After all, even the Second Commandment warns that the worship of graven images results in apostasy. I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. unto the third and fourth generation of those that hate me. And so in the line of the Church, in the line of the Church of Jesus Christ, there are always branches that don't bring forth fruit. And when that becomes characteristic of a denomination as a whole, The result is that the whole denomination is cut off from the vine. Generations until there are none left. That's the way God works. That's the motivation for the admonition presently. I know that from personal experience. I know that from my own relation. I had an uncle, an aunt, who in 1953 left the churches because they didn't like Reverend Hoeksema. My uncle told me that in so many words. But he said to me, don't worry, don't worry. We'll stay Protestant Reformed. We'll always hold to the Protestant Reformed Church. I promise you that." Well, as a matter of fact, he did. But he was gone from the church for, I don't know how long, probably 30 years. And then he came back, he and his wife. And he came to me weeping. And he said to me, I'm so glad to be back. This is the most wonderful thing that I could possibly imagine, to be back where the gospel is preached. But I lost my family. They're all gone. And it's my fault because I took them out of the church. What are you going to say? What are you going to say? It's true. And so it is in the history of the church. I recall a couple of years ago or so that Reverend Bransma gave a presentation on the work in Pittsburgh. It was very, very interesting. And he made remarks something like this. We plow on rocky soil in Pittsburgh. We've been there for so many years and the group that is a part of the fellowship is very small. And people keep asking me all the time, how many, how many do you have in the fellowship? And he said, not very many. I think it's in the new agenda for Synod precisely how many. But he said, and this is the remark that struck me, and he was dead on, he said, we must not forget in doing home missionary work that there comes a time when God is finished with the country, just as he is with families. The revivalists and those who hope for a revival in America and in Europe and who pray for revival and plead for revival are dead wrong. God doesn't come back again and again and again to a country or a denomination that has forsaken the gospel. America had the gospel at one time. The truth was proclaimed. The church was strong and vibrant and living. Not all of America believed the gospel, but it was a strong voice of the truth of the gospel, especially in what is now the Presbyterian Church of the U.S., but also in the Reformed churches that began in New York and New Jersey and on the Hudson River. but America doesn't want the gospel. In our day, they've turned their backs on the gospel, rejected it, and not only rejected it, but are now reaching a point where they are actively enemies of the gospel and are set upon doing all they can to root Christianity out of the country. And foolishly, and contrary to the will of God, there are churches who piously think they are doing the right thing when they pray for revivals. God doesn't work that way, beloved. He doesn't work that way. Because we're talking about an organism, He works in the lines of generations. A family that forsakes God and the gospel is lost in its generations. A country that turns its back on the gospel is lost. God turns his back on it and goes elsewhere to gather the church. If you want to know where today God is gathering his church, go to Singapore and go to the Philippines. Reverend Klein himself wrote me that only recently he had two instances where groups of people in other parts of the Philippines begged him, please come and teach us the reformed faith. And he had to say to them, no, I can't. I can't. I haven't got time for any more work. I got all I can do to handle what I have now. That's where God is gathering his church. Enough of you are carpenters to understand that when a carpenter is building a house, he makes progress and there comes a time when he puts the roof on the house and is finished with it. God works that way too. And it isn't as if a carpenter, while he's building the house, has constantly to go back to the foundation and repair the foundation and perhaps rebuild it. He doesn't constantly go back to walls that he already built because those walls have deteriorated. Not at all. You'd never get a house done that way. God doesn't work that way either. When a branch does not bring forth fruit, it's cut off. Though in its past generations, it belonged to the vine. And that's what's happening to our country. And that's what's happening to the churches in our country. And that's what's going to happen to us, too, if we don't pay attention to what Jesus says here. We must not think that we're so holy and so marvelously faithful and so wondrously faithful to God's Word that it can't happen to us. It can't. How well, when I was a child already, old saints, frequently in Dutch, would pray in church sometimes on family visitations, even at the dinner table. Lord, cut us not off in our generations. I don't think there's a single one of you here tonight does not know the agony of parents who see their children or grandchildren go astray. God deals with generations. At the same time, and that's the positive part of the text, Jesus says that the good branches that bring forth fruit are pruned, and really those two works of God are the same thing. When God cuts off dead branches, he's pruning the good ones. Pruning hurts. Pruning hurts when it happens in your own family. It does. But pruning is difficult and necessary. Every spring, a man with a vineyard who cares for his vineyard goes through it and cuts out the dead branches. If he doesn't, it hinders. growth of the good branches. That's why Christian discipline is a necessary and important mark of the true Church. When good branches are pruned, they bring forth, as Jesus says, more fruit. Unfaithful members in the congregation or in families are a detriment to the welfare, the spiritual welfare of the family and of the church. They are, they are. And let's bear in mind that each one of us can be, too, if we refuse to abide in the vine. We think we can live as we please, Think it doesn't make any difference how we spend our life? We're a detriment to the church. We make it more difficult for the church to fulfill its calling and bring forth fruit. That's even true in church splits. I lived through 1953 and many of you did too. It was necessary. It was important for the welfare of the Protestant Reformed churches and God made it such. But don't forget it took our churches almost 10 years to recover. It did. Mission work was stymied. Progress in the development of the truth was almost non-existent. Families mourned the loss of friends and relatives, and the church could not get at its calling and be faithful in its work until it had recovered from the pruning that was necessary in our own denomination. And so, If you are unfaithful, you must not think that you can be that alone. You do harm to your family and to the church. Do you sense now the urgency, the awful urgency of the admonition? Abide in me! That's all. Abide in me. What does that mean? Well, it means in the first place, of course, that we are planted in Christ. Faith is not our work, but God's. And faith grafts us into Christ. Maintain that graft. I know, I know, God does it all. You all know I believe that with all my heart. That doesn't negate the admonition. That doesn't make the admonition of no account as sometimes we think, well, God will do it anyway. We don't have to worry about it. God will see to it that his work is accomplished. That's a terrible, terrible antinomianism. that often creeps into the church and robs the church of her power to fulfill her calling. There it is in all its force, with all its importance, driven home by the Lord himself. Abide in me. That's your calling. The text itself makes it clear what that means in the first place because Jesus says to his disciples, Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. There it is. How do we abide in Christ? It is through the power of the word of the gospel that is proclaimed in the church. and by which we are sanctified and remain grafted into Christ. We can be so lackadaisical sometimes about coming to church, traveling on the Lord's day, staying home for the least little matter or problem, and sitting in church half dead, mulling over and pondering all kinds of things of the world, satisfying the lusts of the flesh even while we sit in the Lord's house. So that the word of the gospel sails over the tops of our heads, and the minister who asks the congregation a day later, what did I preach on Sunday, can't find anybody in the church who can tell him. They don't remember. But it's in the preaching that faith is fed and strengthened. Paul writes that in Romans 10. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. That's how it comes. Have they not heard? Oh yes, they heard. Israel heard. But the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled. Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? The word of God came to Israel. It came through the prophets. But Israel didn't care. The nation didn't care. And when the word became flesh and dwelt among them, what did they do? They took the word and they killed him. hung him on a cross. That's what the nation did. Nevertheless, we abide in Christ first of all by saying to it at all costs that our faith is nourished and fed by the preaching of the gospel. by its glorious truths, by its promises of mercy and grace and forgiveness, by its admonitions, by its rebukes, all that the word is for the child of God who hears, hears with the spiritual ears of faith. The preaching of the gospel is the way in which we abide in Christ. We must not take the church for granted. We must not take the preaching for granted. A minister mustn't either. He mustn't. He's doing the most important thing in the face of the earth. He's doing more important things than Obama with his legislation or Congress with its laws. The preaching of the gospel is the only channel that the Lord has given to bring faith to the church and save it. So that's, first of all, our calling, and not only for ourselves individually, but for our children, so that when we sit in church with our children, we be sure that they listen according to the ability of the years in which they have lived. And teach our children to listen. And not only to listen so that they can repeat parrot-like few things the minister said, but to listen as the word of God comes to them personally, too. I will be your God, the God of your seed. Faithful parents spend at least part of Saturday night with their children. This is what the minister is going to preach on. These are some of the things he's going to say. Listen for this and remember that's Christ speaking. That's what faithful parents do when they bring up their children in the fear of the Lord. Do you do that? Do you? Take the time. To abide in the Lord means then that we walk according to the precepts of the gospel. My wife and I are just in our devotions reading Psalm 119. And we can't quite get over it, how often the psalm pleads with the Lord, teach me thy statute, show me thy precepts, reveal to me the way thou wouldst have me go. And the psalmist does not mean by that simply give me a class in which the truths of the word of God are laid out and force me to memorize them. That isn't the teaching that happens in the school of God, happens in the classrooms. You memorize mathematical formulas. It's the kind of education that we seek from God that teaches us his ways in such a way that we love them, that we can sing the response of the psalmist. Oh, how love I thy law. It is my meditation all the day. The law is written upon our hearts. And then we abide in Christ. And we abide in Christ by seeking everything we need from Him. We don't run to the government. We don't strike for higher wages. We don't have our minds and hearts so set on earthly treasures that we can't live without promotion or raising pay at what we consider to be proper intervals. Vacations don't become the most important part of our life. And of all things, beloved, sports don't. Certainly not. And when sports sit in the driver's seat of the life of the members of the church, I tremble with fear, I do. when our young people can go around wearing sweatshirts, singing the praises of, what's his name, Michael Jordan, a fornicator, a Sabbath desecrator, a blasphemer, singing his praises because of his proudness on the basketball court. Something's wrong. The church is the center of our lives. Ministry of the gospel is that which demands our attention and to which we give it. How amiable are thy courts, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, fainteth for the courts of the Lord. Not today, because I have to go on vacation. Is that our life? Is it a life, young people too. God saves his church in the line of generations. Is our life abiding in the pleasures of this present time? Is that what our life is? Or is it abiding in Christ? As Paul puts it, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And don't forget, it's not only a matter that concerns you, it's a matter that will have its consequences in your generations. You know that, you've seen it, I have too. And when in all faithfulness you abide in Christ, from whom we have all things and in whom we have everlasting life and from whom we receive joy without sorrow and everlasting deliverance from sin, who cares for us in our pilgrimage, who feeds us with bread convenient for us, who gives us all things according to his promises and we live that way, then our children will too when we teach them Abide in Christ and you will be branches that bear fruit. May God grant it to you and to me, beloved. I know in our age of affluence it's so difficult. But let's examine ourselves and let's earnestly beseech the God of all grace that he give to us. and to our seed, the power of faith to lay hold on him. Amen. Lord, we thank thee for thy word. It comes to us sometimes with hammer blows. It's like a sword that pierces into our hearts and we cringe from the pain of it. It's like the lash of a whip that we feel in every fiber of our being, but we need it, oh Lord, we need it. I know we all know that we can be so wicked that we simply turn our backs on thy chastisement and say, oh, we don't need that word, we're all right, we're doing just fine. Keep us from that, Lord, and teach us to abide in Christ and in Him alone, that we may bear fruit for ourselves and our children and our children's children until the Lord return. Amen.