Hello and welcome to our broadcast today. We're in John Chapter 15. We left off in John Chapter 14 when Jesus said, Arise, let us go hence. They're on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane as this next conversation takes place. Stay tuned for our broadcast. We're reading in John chapter 15, verse number 1, I am the true vine, Jesus said, I am the true vine, and my father is a husbandman. 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, 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. For herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." Well, we said as we began this study in the book of John that the proper way to study the Bible is to look at a portion of scripture for observation, then to look at it for interpretation, and then to look at it for application. Well, the observation is very clear here as we read down through the first eight verses. What about the interpretation of these verses? Well, actually, the interpretation of these verses strictly has to do with the nation of Israel. He said, I am the true vine. And when he said that, those people who were listening to him, those Israelites, they knew stuff that he was referring to that would take us probably five broadcasts to explain. We'll just read a little bit of it back here in Isaiah chapter 5 and verse number 1. It says, Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. And he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine, and built a tower in the midst of it. and also made a winepress therein, and he looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes. Now who is he talking to? Very plainly, verse 3, And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard. What could have been done more to my vineyard that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes. And now go to, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up, and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down. I will lay it waste, and it shall be not pruned nor digged, but there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain, no rain upon it. And just in case we didn't get the interpretation of it, he said in verse seven, for the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. And so that has to do with the interpretation of it, and it is very important as you go through this chapter then to realize that the interpretation of everything that is being said here has to do with the nation of Israel. It does not have to do with a local church, it has to do with the nation of Israel. However, the Bible says these things happen and are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Now we're there. We're at the end of this age and they are written for our admonition. So that's where we do not do the Bible any injustice by taking an application from these things as long as the applications are in line with the interpretation. That is, we can't build a doctrine, and some have done that with this chapter, and a lot of other chapters have built a doctrine of something that the actual interpretation is for Israel. So we want to look at this as we go through it, and whenever you take any portion of Scripture to study it, we need to ask ourselves just who's who in this story. Well, it's pretty plain here. I am the true vine, that's Jesus talking, so he is Christ is the vine and he says in ye are the branches ye are the branches I am the vine and you are the branches so Christ is the vine and Christians are the branches that's the application we want to make here now again the interpretation has to do with Israel but it's written for our admonition so let's make some applications here the true vine is Jesus Christ the branches that is the Christians now the branches get their life from the vine. That is, the Christians get their life. The Bible says in 2 Peter 1.4 that we are partakers of the divine nature we get our life from the vine, which is Christ. I am the vine, and you are the branches. So again, Christ is the vine, verse 1, Christians are the branches, verse 5, and the Bible says the Father is the husbandman, verse 1, and the husbandman is one who prepares the land for use, and we've seen that in Isaiah chapter 5, where it has to do with Israel. There are three very obvious areas in this chapter that he is dealing with, and first of all, we have one of abiding in Christ, Second, loving Christians. And third, hating, and that has to do not with us hating anybody, but we will be hated by Christ rejecters. Now let's look at the first one, abiding in Christ. Verse number four. He said, Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear witness of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me. I am the vine, 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. So here we have this first section that has to do with abiding in Christ. In verse number two it says, Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. Now, first of all, every branch. That's every Christian in me, in Christ. There's therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The Bible is very plain in many places that once we're in Christ, we cannot ever be out of Christ again. Once you're a child of God, you are a child of God. The Bible preaches eternal security for the believer. Well, what's it talking about? Every branch, every Christian in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away. Does that mean if I am not bearing fruit and if I'm not winning souls that I'm going to go to hell? No, it does not. This word taketh away has been translated take up. 32 times. And of course, Strong's Concordance says it's to raise from the ground. And of course, God does that. He is the husband. He's the one that's taking care of the vineyard here. And so we see that what he's saying is, every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he raises it up. Gets it up out of the dirt. Gives it every chance it can possibly have that it might bring forth fruit. And he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit. And so in verse number two he talks about fruit, and then in verse number two he talks about more fruit, and then down in verse number eight he said here, and is my father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. So we have fruit, we have more fruit, and we have much fruit, depending on whether or not we are abiding in Christ. All right, now let's look at verse four. Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except that it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in me." Now, he is talking to those eleven men. Judas Iscariot's not even there anymore. He has people who are genuinely born again, and that is the only people that he's talking to. He has left the upper room He is on the way to Gethsemane and he is having this chat with these men who are going, he is going to turn over the ministry to change the world. And so he says to those men, abide in me. Well, obviously then there is a choice here. They have to make a choice whether they are going to abide in him or not abide in him. What does it mean to abide? It means to accept and act in accordance with the rule. For instance, we talk about law-abiding citizens. He said, now are you going to accept and act within accordance to the rules that I am laying out for you? It's very obvious that these men would have a choice whether they would abide in Christ or whether they would not. He is giving them this choice. Now again, the word abide, according to the dictionary, is to accept and and act in accordance with the rule. And we talk about law-abiding citizens. You're going to be a law-abiding Christian, you're going to be a law-abiding disciple, then you're going to bear much fruit. Obviously, Peter made a choice within a few hours, and he made a very wrong choice. In a few hours, he was cursing and denying that he even knew the Lord Jesus. Was he abiding at that time? Obviously, he was not. John 12 and 46 says, Whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. Well, Peter went into some darkness here. He made a choice. And so he is speaking to these disciples, and he's saying, listen, I'm leaving everything with you, and if you're going to do it the way it needs to be done, you need to be abiding in me. Then in verse 4 he says, The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, except it act in accordance with the rules. And so, in the vine, what does it mean to be in the vine? It means to be in something is to be surrounded by something, and the vine is Christ. If He is there, if we are surrounded by Him in every act and every day in what we are doing, then we're going to walk the way He wants us to walk. If we're going to choose to walk on our own, and choose not to have Him there, and choose not to go in accordance with His rules, then we're going to go astray. And so he says in verse 5, he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same will bring forth much fruit. And then he went on to say, without me ye can do nothing. He didn't say you can't do nothing, he said you can do nothing. It's important to understand that the dictionary says nothing is something of no importance. Nothing is not nothing, nothing is something. Nothing, the dictionary says, is something of no importance. So yeah, you can do lots of things without Christ, but it's nothing. You cannot do anything of importance without him. That is what he is telling these disciples. And then he says in verse 6, If any 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. Now, I said when we began, let's not be making any doctrines out of stuff that was actually taught to the nation of Israel. First, in verse 6, notice the word, if. That's a very important word. Jesus said in John 11, verse 10, If a man walk in the night, he stumbleth. Well, Peter went off into the night, didn't he? He went stumbling that night. And so he says in verse 6, If a man abideth not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, it is withered, and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. The word if is in the Bible 1,595 times. It's in the book of John 76 times. You want to look at John 15 alone, it says if in verse 6, if you abide not in me. If, in verse 7, you abide in me. If, in verse 10, you keep my commandments. If, in verse 14, you do the commandments that I give unto you. So, if you abide not, verse 6, that's obviously giving us a choice on whether we're going to be law-abiding Christians or whether we are not. We're going to be like the Corinthians. We're not going to get the blessings of God in our lives. Now this verse is often used for those who want to prove that you can lose your salvation, which goes against a whole bunch of scriptures in the Bible, so that can't be true. But what does it say? It says they're cast forth as a branch, they're withered, Men gather them, they cast them into the fire, and they are burned." Now this whole portion of Scripture, this entire chapter, has absolutely nothing to do with the doctrine of salvation. It is totally and completely talking about serving God. It's talking about service, not salvation. And so he is using an analogy here. He is simply saying, if you are not bringing forth fruit, then you're useless. Paul was talking about this in 1 Corinthians 9, 27, when he said, But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. Castaway. What's that? It means put on a shelf and not used of God anymore. I keep my body in subjection so I won't become a useless branch. We look at this in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where it's talking about the judgment seat of Christ. It says we are laborers together and we are God's husbandry. And he said there's going to be a trial and there's going to be gold, silver, precious stone, wood, hay, and stubble and all of these are going to be put into the fire and they shall be revealed by fire, that is our works, and the fire shall try every man's work What sort it is. And that's what he's talking about here in John chapter 15. That's what Paul was talking about when he said about being a castaway. And that's what it's talking about here in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Read that chapter carefully and you'll see what we're talking about. So Jesus is saying in John 15, if any man abide, or if any man abide not, it's simply a choice. Well, we'll continue it tomorrow. Be sure and tune in for our broadcast. We're out of time again. We'll try to make it plain. We'll try to make it simple.