Tap your neighbor and ask them: what kind of fruit describes you? [wait five seconds]

I heard all sorts of fruits. But I’d be a pineapple. Hard on the outside, but sweet and delicious on the inside. You gotta work at getting to the fruit, but when you do, it’s good for you.

The point of that exercise was to break the ice between you and neighbor. Make sure you exchange contact information and get deeper with them after this service and later in the week.

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for gathering us. You gave us your word for our instruction, that through your Scripture we may have hope from the encouragement we receive from it. Lord, we need your hope today. What a hopeless time we live in! We need your Word to challenge us toward  harmony with you and with one another. The strife that some of us have in relationships today, God, do your work in the hearts of the people feeling the tension and stress. Let forgiveness come. Let there be restoration. Let there be healing.  

God, you gave us a strong obligation to bear with one another. As a community, help us go from a posture of bearing with one another to building up one another. Help us build up one another in faithfulness to you. Especially let us be build in areas our faith has failed and resulted in sin and destruction.

Build us up in our weaknesses. Lord, help us keep your commandments because that is how we love you. Lord we love you. Let us glorify you with one voice that you are our one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Your name be praised because of love. In Jesus name. Amen.

John 15.

¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² 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.

³Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ 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. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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.

⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I 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.

¹¹ These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:1-11 ESV)

The conclusion of this passage is that:

Big Idea: Disciples of Jesus produce fruitful lives

And to have a fruitful life, we need to:

1. Recognize Our Purpose (vv. 1–3); and
2. Remain in Jesus (vv. 4–11)

The result of a fruitful life is JOY!

Who wants joy in their lives? Raise your hands! I know I do!

We’d be living in a better society if people had more joy in their lives.

• People wouldn’t get upset so easily.
• People would be more agreeable.
• People wouldn’t be act as selfishly.
• People would actually smile when I’m preaching so I don’t feel so judged up here.

Now, let’s make a distinction between joy and happiness:

• “joy” is an internal feeling, a demeaner; it’s cultivated, constant, and eternal
• “happiness” is an external expression of feelings, a mood; it’s momentary and fleeting and comes from  getting what you want in the moment. And when you get what you want enough times, nothing makes you happy anymore.

So we want joy that is constant, unfading, and undeterred.

As a fruitful disciple, you may not always be happy, but your countenance will reflect God’s joy in the face of all circumstances. Let’s unpack this passage.

¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.

Pause for a moment. We have to understand this metaphor from a historic and cultural context for the rest of this to make more sense. In my unscholarly opinion, Jesus is making reference to Psalm 80 specifically, but it could also be a reference the prophets Isaiah or Jeremiah.

The context of Psalm 80 is a prayer about how God should restore the nation of Israel from its oppressors through the “son of man” planted by God. The reason God needs to restore his chosen people through the “son of man” is threefold:

1. First, so that God’s people would experience restoration  
2. second, so that they would not turn away from him
3. third, so God’s people would become what they were always intended to be.

I want to read parts of the Psalm to you.

⁷Restore us, O God of hosts;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!

⁸ You brought a vine out of Egypt;
    you drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground for it;
    it took deep root and filled the land….

¹⁷ But let your hand be on the man of your right hand,
    the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself!
¹⁸ Then we shall not turn back from you;
    give us life, and we will call upon your name!
Psalm 80:7-9, 17-18 ESV

The “vine” in this Psalm is the nation of Israel, coming out of Egypt, driving out the nations that occupied Canaan, and then becoming a nation in the territory. But what the Psalmist is prophesying is God’s son, Jesus. Jesus went to Egypt to flee genocide when he was born. He returned from Egypt, repeating the exodus story, going back to Israel, being planted to fulfill his purpose.

This is important: When Jesus teaches his disciples that he is the “true vine,” he’s upending traditional views of identity and belonging, moving it from an ethnic, socio-political, physical place to a person. Until this point in history, belonging to God’s chosen family and having an identity as a child of God was rooted in being born to one of the tribes of Israel. And your status depended heavily on which tribe and family you were born to.

With the statement: “I am the true vine,” he becomes the true Israel. What God said he would do for Israel to glorify himself, he is going to do it to Jesus.

Every single week in this series, you heard Jesus say: if you want to be my disciple, you need to have a part of me.

If you have self-confidence and self-image issues because where you come from and whose lineage you’re a part of; or if thinking about your past is shameful—then be encouraged, when you are adopted in Christ through faith, your belonging and identity comes from God, our Father. That means:

• The promises of God are yes and amen in Christ. (2 Corinthians 1)
• You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. (Philippians 4)
• With God all things are possible, and I am his servant. (Luke 1)

You are a child of God, not because you were born into a certain family or in a certain place, but because God so loved the world, he sent his one and only son to be planted and rooted in this world so that all who believe would not perish, but be a part of God’s chosen.

If you don’t believe that or never believed that, then believe it today.

It was impossible to live up to the standard of holiness God demands from his creation. So the Father in his infinite love for us, gives us his son who extends his love to people far from God. In faith there is no question about where your from, what you did. None of that matters in faith because Jesus, pure and holy, came from God, lived perfectly here on earth, and he sacrificed himself on the cross for our sins and paid the penalty we could not pay. Death could not hold him, and he was resurrected. He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God, preparing for a dwelling place for his people.  

You belong to Jesus. Your identity is Christ disciple. That’s what we believe! That’s why we have assurances.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the true vine!

God, the father, is the vinedresser for the true vine! A vinedresser, cares for his or her vines not for just a single season, but for the entirety of the vine’s life. A vinedresser is not like a farmer that raises crops for a season and moves on to the next thing. God isn’t in it for the short term, he’s in it for the long haul!

The glory of a vinedresser is in his or her vines! We talked about this when we talked about the trinity a few weeks ago. God is in the business of glorifying himself. The Father glorifies the son through the spirit in creation and in grace for eternity. So we receive the benefits of the father glorifying his true vine. Verse 2.

² 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.

This may not be new to many of you. But I only started gardening during the summer of COVID. What I learned after three seasons of gardening is that you can maximize the output of your fruit yielding plants by pruning the plant. Not only do they become more efficient in terms of output, the fruits also taste better.

The logic behind pruning is simple: the branches that don’t yield fruit or yield a little fruit still drain the resources of the entire plant and divert energy away from the branches that produce the fruit you want to eat. If fruit on a plant isn’t edible, then it’s not fruitful. So you intentionally cut away parts to maximize the potential in others.

Now imagine your life being a branch of a plant that produces some type of fruit, the fruit you told your neighbor about earlier. Without pruning in your life, your fruitfulness is going to be scattered and unfocused in various areas of your life. Your energies are spread too thin, trying to grow fruit in a scattered, in an unfocused way.

Be honest, some of us are spread way too thin. Our energies and efforts are scattered everywhere. All that potential, but no results in any one area. Here’s the worst part, we chose to live that way!  

It blows my mind sometimes how overcommitted we are to unfruitful things. We’re so overcommitted that we can’t even commit the sins we want without pre-scheduling them. I know some of you are patting your own backs.

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to live fruitful lives. We are not called to live with the potential of a fruitful life. Fruitful is not about having lots of little tiny fruits with the hopes that one would be harvestable. Fruitful is about having ripe, delicious fruit, that can be harvested.

For that to happen, we must submit ourselves to God for pruning.

If we want to start living fruitfully then we need to be asking God to prune us. Will it hurt? Yes. But we don’t grieve the losses, God prunes so our lives can be fruitful!

Verse 3.

³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

This is a reference to the idea of justification we were talking about in John 13, four weeks ago. Very briefly, “justification” is what happens when a person, through grace alone, by faith alone, is united to Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. It is the legal standing we have before God because our sins were poured onto Jesus on the cross, and our sins paid for by his blood. Our justification before God is instantaneous and complete in the moment we place our faith in Jesus. If we place our faith in Jesus as our savior and Lord, we are clean, we are a part of Jesus and thus will produce the fruits of Jesus.

Verse 4.

⁴ 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. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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.

Abide means “to remain in,” or “be a part of.” If we are Jesus’ disciple, we get our identity and belonging from the vine. Some of you have been calling yourself a disciple of Jesus, but you’re trying to grow fruit that you were never intended to grow. It’s like you’re on a grape vine trying to grow cucumbers. Wrong vine, you’ll never be fruitful that way.

We are the branches off the true vine of God. The vine gives us our purpose.

When we abide in Jesus we bear the fruit of his purpose.

His purpose is to be the way, the truth, and the life—to show people the father.

When we abide in Jesus, we show people the father because of who is in us. What a purpose!

What would your life look like if we were to actually abide in Jesus’ purpose? I’m talking about following Jesus, doing the things of Jesus, to speak the words of Jesus. I’m not talking about religious activities.

If that’s what our purpose is, then ask yourself, are you really abiding in Jesus? Maybe sometimes, but definitely not always.

Culture tells us that it’s only socially and religiously acceptable to abide in Jesus only in some areas or in some situations. In fact, those acceptable areas and situations coincidentally line up to abiding when it’s convenient or advantageous for us. It’s almost never acceptable when we’re at work or when we’re with our neighbors or non-believing friends.

I’m guilty of not always abiding in Jesus. This is a safe space to admit that. Michelle calls me out on it at least weekly. 

More than only abiding in Jesus when it’s advantageous, I purposely refuse to abide in Jesus because I want to show people the Father, but I want to do it my way. How broken is that thinking?

As I was preparing this sermon, God has been convicting me of this. God’s Spirit kept telling me: “I just want you to abide in me.” We are the branches on a vine. We’re not the vine itself. Without the vine, we wither up and die. We’re good for nothing except to be burned. This is what life is like outside of Jesus. That’s where our lives were headed, to an eternal fire pit, before we gave ourselves over to him in faith and grafted onto him.

Being fruitful requires us an understanding and commitment to purpose and then to maximize that potential we have toward that purpose. Are you abiding in Jesus’ purpose? How is that going?

If the accomplishment of God’s purpose is not present in your life, then you need pruning. We need to be pruned so we can focus on our purpose.

There is no fruit acceptable and worthy outside of abiding in Jesus’ purpose. What do you think the fruits of the spirit are? They’re manifestation of attitudes and actions that show the unbelieving world the Father.  

This is what abiding looks like tangibly so the fruits of Jesus’ purpose show up in your life. Verse 7.

⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

You abide by having his Word be a part of you. God’s word begins to govern your life and it manifests itself in:

• the way we think
• how we act
• how we speak

If God’s word doesn’t govern our thoughts, actions, and speech, then we’re not abiding in Jesus. What a simple litmus test!

Your not a disciple of Jesus just because you open the Bible app on your phone once a day. God’s word must actually ruminated on and then applied.

In fact, I want you to try this:

• If you’re not on a Bible reading plan or a specific Bible Study. Then get into a Bible reading plan or a Bible study.
  • I’ve been doing a deep dive in the Book of James every morning in October.
• When you’re on the Bible reading plan or a specific Bible study, then whatever you read or studied that day, I want you to apply it three ways that day:
  • Apply it to how you think,
  • how you act, and
  • how you speak.

When we abide in God’s word like that, the way we pray changes. Our prayers start to abide in Jesus. Our prayers start to ask God to show himself to an unbelieving world.

God wants us to pray to make our lives fruitful because that brings him glory. Have we actually prayed for God’s glory to be displayed through us or are we still praying as if God is the genie that’s supposed to give us what we want?

Let me tell you how foolish that is.

This passage starts with Jesus telling us that the Father is the vinedresser. When we abide in the vine, and yield to how the vinedresser is dressing the vine and the branches off the vine, we yield the fruits the vinedresser wants! Our prayers become an expression of that.

There is a supernatural impossible waiting to be unleashed through you because you are in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father. God is waiting for us to pray boldly because he’s ready glorify himself through them.

I’ve been praying this one prayer for our church family this year: that we would be filled in awe of God’s glory. This is how I’ve been asking God to leave us in awe:

1. That he would make us worthy of his calling and fulfill every good work of ministry all of you undertake by faith by his power
2. That spiritual wisdom and understanding would fill each and every one of us through his Spirit so that we would not stumble or faulter
3. That our dedication to abiding in Jesus would make us distinct in a society and culture trying to consume us
4. That transparent, meaningful relationships would become the norm for our entire church family
5. That our children and teenagers would be discipled by adults and not just our programming
6. That we would be bold enough to share the gospel with outsiders and become witnesses unafraid of persecution or doing good works
7. That our workplaces and careers become a place our gospel traverses for the glory of God

Can I report that I believe God, as the vinedresser, is answering or has answered these prayers. Open your eyes, see and hear what is happening.

Churches that don’t have a campus pastor or senior pastor are not supposed to thrive, but God has been so faithful to us that he adds far above our ability to keep up. I know some of you recognize that and keep investing in God’s kingdom here through your generosity. Thank you for being a faithful partner in ministry with us.

But let’s keep abiding. Let’s keep praying: God will be glorified in us and the world will know whose disciples we are. Let’s keep submitting to the word manifesting itself in our thoughts, actions, and speech and bleeding over into our prayers.

Prayer is not always my favorite part of abiding in Jesus. But I so desperately want God to manifest his glory, so join me in praying:

• that unbelievers would find themselves here because you invited them and they would hear the gospel boldly proclaimed and be saved.
• that unity and harmony define our relationships.
• that God’s Spirit would fill each and every one of us from the oldest to the youngest.
• that there would be signs, wonders, and healing that would happen amongst us that point to the glory of God!
• for miraculous deliverance in circumstances of abuse, trauma, addiction.

Let’s keep going. Verse 9.

⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I 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.

This goes back to what we read last week in John 14. If we love Jesus, we will keep his commandments. We remain in his love through the Holy Spirit that dwells in us. As a result of Jesus’ love for us that we experience through the Holy Spirit, we will never be left as orphans. The next time you’re identity, belonging, or purpose is under attack, remember the love of God.

• You may not feel loved.
• But God loves you.
• Remaining in his love will give you peace.
• Peace not like the world gives, but the peace that Jesus gives so that you will not be troubled or afraid of following his commands.

The Father’s love for his son has overcome the world and you will know the love of God as a result, no matter what you’re going through or experiencing. That’s a miracle for you and me to encourage us to continue to be pruned and to continue boldly being fruitful. God’s love will fill your life.

If need to feel God’s love now in this season, come to the front after this service, I want you to pray with somebody here by the stage, we have people waiting to pray that God’s peace comes over you.

Verse 11.

¹¹ These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

The mark of a fruitful life is a joyful life. If the disciples of Jesus produce fruitful lives, and a mark of that fruitfulness is joy, then the disciples of Jesus must overflow in joy. Purpose allows us to be joyful. Abiding allows us to be joyful.

Joy will manifest itself

• Joy will manifest itself in the face of trials declaring  our faith has persevered.
• Joy will manifest itself as it overflows with hope in the Holy Spirit giving us strength
• Joy will manifest itself as it refreshes us in remembering Jesus’s sacrifice
• Joy will manifest itself as it cries with shouts of praise to God
• Joy will manifest itself as it affirms us as approved and loved by God
• Joy will manifest itself at gives us supernatural peace.

Let’s pray.

Father, the joy of our life is your son. You gave us a part of yourself. You made us a part of your family. You gave us an identity. Then you told us to be fruitful. Lord, we are fruitful, but only when we abide in your love. Lord, as we submit to your will, I ask that you continue the work of sanctifying us for your purposes, for your glory. This is what we desire. This is our hope.

Lord, we bow before you so that the riches of your glory may be granted to us, that your spirit strengthen us with your power. Lord, I ask that in our hearts, we can witness faith take root, to ground us in the love of your son. Lord, let the love of your son, the love that surpasses all knowledge fill us with the fullness of your joy.

Lord, I ask that you do this for all of us who are here, that according to the power of your work, your glory may be manifested in us, not only now and here, but in every subsequent generation after us. We pray this in your son’s holy name. Amen.