I AM: The Vine

Most of us know what a life of following Jesus should look and feel like, and yet most of also know we aren’t fully experiencing this life. While we want to be people defined by our fruit of love, joy, and peace, we’re often more acquainted with the bad fruit of anxiety, fear, and idolatry. The simple reason for this is that we haven’t learned how to abide in Jesus. When Jesus compares himself to a vine and calls us his branches in John 15, he’s inviting us to live a constant life of redirecting our minds, hearts, and bodies to him. By being in close intimacy and proximity to Jesus, we slowly take on the characteristics of Jesus. And the more characteristics of Jesus we take on, the more fruit we produce. This is the process of abiding.

 well, I’ve only been stabbed once before in my life. Uh,

I was at a Halloween party in college, but it wasn’t that kinda Halloween party. Whatever it is you’re thinking. It wasn’t, there was no intoxicants involved. Um, it was pretty tame. Um, but my wife, Shelby and I, we were dating at the time and we decided to go as Lilo and stitch to this Halloween party. Um, but I thought it would be funny if I went as Lilo.

So, I went to the store and I bought, uh, we went to Goodwill and I bought a Lilo dress and I made it. I was really proud of it. It looked really good, I think like movie accurate, Lilo dress. And Shelby made her stitch costume. And we went to this, uh, house party. Uh, it was a dark room, um, so you could see Mario cart better, like in the corner of the, it was again, very tame, uh, Halloween party as far as college parties go.

And my friend, my best friend, actually the best man at my wedding, uh, went as a park ranger. And so he came in the full getup. He had the, the vest and everything. And, uh, he had a prop, which was a knife, but a real knife that he had brought his own actual, like buck knife. And this, this story doesn’t make sense.

There’s no way I shouldn’t have even told this story. Um, as I’m writing it out, I’m like, this doesn’t make any sense, but I’m gonna do it anyways. I don’t know what happened. I think he made fun of my Lilo dress. I think he was making fun of the work that I’d put in. And we, we started sort of arguing back and forth.

Uh, and he kinda like pushed me and I kinda like pushed him back. And again, it was a dark room in a dark corner, and I couldn’t really see what was happening. And I think he, uh, he kind of went up to like, pretend to slap me, like, okay, you look silly. That kind of thing. What I didn’t see was that he had pulled a knife and pretended to stab me with it.

And so when I reached my hand out to kind of stop what I thought was just a slap, uh, the knife went right through there, that little webbed part of my hand. And he kinda looked at me like, why would you do that? And I kinda looked at him like, why would you bring a knife to a Halloween party? And then stabbed me with it.

That’s when the pain started it. So the blood starts trickling down and I realize that I, I, my, I’ve been stabbed that my best friend betrayed me and stabbed me in the hand. So I’m bleeding everywhere, all over my Lilo dress and I go to the kitchen. I want to wash my hands out and just get this blood off of me as, as quickly as possible.

And I just can’t stop the blood. There’s so much blood, it’s coming out in the sink, and I have, there’s paper towels happening, and like no one else notices. Anything’s happening. So everyone else is living their lives and I’m thinking like, they’re gonna cut my, they’re gonna have to amputate my hand. This is not, this is like a major blood vessel.

Uh, and then I start to feel weak. I start to, I mean, I’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m panicking. I’m like, I don’t wanna tell my parents. How do I tell my parents? Um, I don’t know what to do. So I, I washing my hand and I had this horrible vision of like, the paramedics coming and finding me, like passed out on the kitchen, dressed in a Lilo dress with like, blood everywhere.

Like, what are they going to think happened here? So I’m like, I gotta get to the couch. I’m not passing out here. So I turn around and I’m trying to make my way to the couch. Uh, and I, as soon as I turn around, I hit the ground, everything goes black. When I wake up, people are around me and I’m being guided over to the couch.

And they lay me down and, uh, I had fainted, I had passed out.

Uh, following Jesus is kind of like that.

Uh, here’s, here’s what I mean. Um, in my experience, that’s the only time I’ve ever fainted or passed out or, or lost a source of life or felt like I was not getting what I needed to get. Um, and I think all jokes aside, I think that a lot of times, um, following Jesus feels like trying not to faint. It feels like losing energy.

It feels like we’re not accessing the life that God has for us. It feels like there’s a promise of what life should be, and it feels like we, we try harder and harder to access that life and overcome sin and bear fruit and do the things that we know that we should be doing, like the practices or reading our Bibles or whatever it is.

Uh, but at the end of the day that just, that energy goes wasted and, and we feel like we’re about to faint. So what is life with God supposed to look like? Or maybe a better question, what is life with God supposed to feel like? Right in the day-to-day in, in seasons of suffering or periods of injustice when people do wrong to us or seasons of manity, when it just feels like we’re going through the motions.

When we don’t feel like God is near us or, or within us, or around us, like maybe we once felt when we started following him, or in seasons of fighting sin, uh, seasons of trying to struggle to overcome something that you know, you should be overcoming and you know that this life is gonna bring trials and tribulations in this life, you will have trouble.

Jesus says, but you’re pretty sure that it’s not supposed to feel like this. I am the vine. This is the last of the seven I am statements of Jesus. Uh, this is the last message in our series looking at the seven I am statements of Jesus and in the story of John’s gospel, we’re also nearing the end of Jesus’ life.

These are the last of Jesus’ days on earth before he’s handed over, uh, and crucified. We’re in what scholars call the farewell discourse, meaning, uh, Jesus knows that he’s about to die, uh, and he’s preparing his disciples, giving him the last words of what to expect. This is when he has this great teaching on the Holy Spirit, and he says, I’m gonna go away and I’m gonna leave this place, but I’m gonna send someone with you, the counselor, who’s gonna teach you and guide you into all truth.

And the disciples don’t really understand what’s happening, and he’s prepping them for what’s about to happen for a season of suffering. So after sharing the Passover meal, uh, which was a big deal, Jesus is sitting with his disciples teaching them about what’s going to happen. And in the middle of that teaching in John 15, he says this, I am the vine.

And when Jesus says this, his disciples immediately would’ve understood what he’s saying. And we could probably piece some things together without any context or history or anything like that. But I think to really understand what Jesus is communicating about himself and about us. We have to do a little background work.

We have to understand something about first century horticulture and national Jewish metaphor. So that’s where we’re headed. So first century horticulture. Um, I think probably the only person that knows anything about Vine dressing is maybe Tyler. Maybe Tyler. I meant to ask you about this earlier. I didn’t know how vines worked.

I, I mean, generically, you kind of know what a vine is and what it isn’t. But agrarian common, uh, metaphors like this were really common in the ancient near East. Uh, so was wine, but to get wine you needed grapes. And to get grapes, you needed, uh, vineyard. And, and a vineyard is made up of vines. And so in a well kept vineyard, uh, you’d have one large vine or multiple large vines that were sometimes as thick as like tree trunks.

And they were usually wrapped around the trunk of a tree or around a wooden trellis, uh, to help kind of keep it shape. Uh, and from these vines, you would have these offshoots, these branches would come out and from those branches, uh, you would have grapes or fruit or whatever. Usually grapes. And so the nutrients for the grapes come directly from the vine.

The vine, uh, has roots that dig deep into the soil, create nutrients, spread it to the branches. The branches are then able to use those nutrients and produce fruit, and to keep the fruit growing and the branches healthy, you have to maintain them, which is what, um, people call, I don’t know what people who call, who, who maintain vineyards are called, uh, but they call it pruning.

It’s a process of actually cutting and trimming branches, even healthy branches. And you do this for a variety of reasons. One is to kind of maintain the shape of the vine. And so you want the vine to kind of grow, uh, in relation to the trellis. You don’t want it to go every which way. Uh, another reason is you can cut off unhealthy branches.

And so if you have unhealthy branches producing unhealthy fruit, that can actually infect the rest of the plant. Now, hearing this metaphor as one of Jesus’ disciples, uh, they would’ve immediately got it. They, it would’ve made sense to them. It would’ve been like a sports metaphor to us today, or any other kind of metaphor that we have.

Uh, Jesus the vine. Okay, got it. Easy. Somehow he brings life to those who are willing to experience pruning, but that’s not all Jesus is saying. Actually, on a deeper level, they would’ve understood something very radical that Jesus is saying about himself. If you notice every week, it’s always a radical statement.

Jesus is making a statement about himself. I am the bread of life that’s communicating something. I am the light of the world that has a deeper meaning. It’s communicating something. I am the vine. Jesus is saying something really important about himself. So now, national Jewish metaphor, vine’s, branches, and fruitfulness.

Uh, were all common images and symbols throughout the Old Testament. Uh, where do we see fruitfulness first in the Bible? Does anyone know? Genesis? Genesis one. Genesis 1 28. God says, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. He’s talking to Adam and Eve. So Adam and Eve, as representatives of humanity and representatives of God are put in the Garden of Eden, they’re made to represent God, to spread his goodness and his beauty throughout the garden, to um, to rule over creation, to to, to cultivate it and then spread the garden to the ends of the earth.

But we know the story. Genesis three, right? They fail. Uh, instead of producing fruit, they eat forbidden fruit. And instead of spreading God’s goodness and beauty to the rest of the world, they spread sin and death. And so from Genesis three, really through Genesis 11, uh, is the story of the expansion of sin.

Sin goes outward, it goes everywhere. Uh, God, this is not God’s what God intended. This is not God’s good intention for creation. And so he puts his rescue mission for humanity into place, and he does this by choosing a people group. A people group that are gonna replace Adam and Eve, not as individuals, but as an entire nation, uh, to represent him to the rest of the world and to bear fruit.

And so towards the end of Genesis, in Genesis 35, God says this, God appeared to Jacob again after he returned from Paan, Patan, IAM. And he blessed him. God said to him, your name is Jacob. You will no longer be named Jacob, but your name will be Israel. So he named him Israel. God also said to him, I am God almighty.

Be fruitful and multiply a nation. Indeed, an assembly of nations will come from you, and kings will descend from you. And so Israel is God’s chosen nation, right? The Jewish people are God’s chosen people. They’re meant to not just rule and reign or have a nation that obeys God, but they’re actually meant to bear fruit, meaning they’re meant to reflect God’s goodness and beauty and law, and morality and ethics to the rest of the world.

And so for the rest of the Old Testament, Israel is meant to bear fruit, and they’re actually called a vine. Psalm 80, for example, you dug up a vine from Egypt. That’s the Israelites being rescued from Egypt. You dug up a vine from Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. Isaiah four on that day, the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of Israel’s survivors.

For Jeremiah two, I planted you a choice Vine from the very best seed. So Israel is a vine. And they’re meant to bear fruit. The vine actually became a national symbol for Nation of Israel. So just like our national symbols, something like an eagle or red, white and blue, it indicates something about our country.

Uh, you think of that, you think America, uh, the vine was everywhere. It was on their coins. It was on the doors to the synagogues. It was even on the door at herd’s temple, the main temple in Jerusalem. And so what you had was at the entrance to the Holy place, which was like the center, uh, representative of god’s, uh, contained presence.

You had a giant purple curtain that represented God’s royalty. And above that curtain, you had a big golden carving of a grapevine and it would kinda wind around. And so the idea was that as you passed through the synagogue, as you passed through the temple, and as you saw people go into the holy of Holies, which you weren’t really supposed to do, um, but if you were to do that, you would kind of be reminded of your role in the nation of Israel.

You are a part of that vine branch. You are meant to bear fruit. In fact, wealthy Jewish people, what they would do is they would actually come and bring gifts to the golden vine. Things like golden grapes or golden fruits, pieces of metal that metal workers would then, uh, weld onto, uh, the, the gold carving of the vine.

And so what you’re doing is literally attaching yourself to this vine. You’re doing what God had meant for you to do. Israel is meant to spread. Nations are supposed to attach themselves to Israel, experience the presence and the life of God, and then produce fruit themselves. And it expands and it expands by attaching yourself to this vine.

You are seeing your place in the story. But Israel’s chosenness was never meant for them. It was for the good of the world around them. Again, they were meant to spread God’s goodness to the nations around them. They were not, uh, meant to just fill that fruit or fill themselves with that fruit, but they’re actually meant to go and, and give that to the nations.

Uh, when God sets them apart, in, in Genesis 12, he calls Abraham and he says that you are gonna be a blessing to the nations. I’m gonna bless you so that you can bless others. That’s the point of their blessing. Now, how does Israel do? Uh, not good. Over and over again. Actually, most of the rest of the Old Testament, if you look at it, it’s this repeated cycle of Israel failing Israel, being punished by God.

Israel repenting, Israel failing again and again. In Isaiah five, you see this picture clearly. This is what’s called the Song of the Vine. So anytime you see Vine or Vineyard, this is talking about Israel. I will sing about the one I love. A song about my loved one’s vineyard, the one I love, had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted it with the finest vines. He built a tower in the middle of it and even dug out a wine press there. He expected it to yield good grapes, but it yielded worthless grapes for the vineyard of the Lord of armies as the House of Israel. And the men of Judah, the plant he delighted in.

He expected justice but saw injustice. He expected righteousness, but heard cries of despair. And so you’re sitting in this small room with Jesus after the Passover meal, and he says this in John 15, I am the vine. You are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit because you can do nothing without me and you get it.

Where Israel failed to produce fruit, Jesus succeeds right where Israel failed to stay faithful to God. Jesus remains intimately connected to the father. And you have a part to play in this story too, that belonging and fruit bearing and family and identity and all of these things that you are supposed to get through your attachment to the nation of Israel is now found through your attachment to Jesus, to your rabbi, to God himself.

That it’s not through Israel or your family lineage, or how often you go to the synagogue on Sundays, on Sabbath, Shabbat. It’s not through how well you obey the law that you produce fruit. It’s not by trying harder to become a better person. Now it’s through your association to your rabbi who you’ve given your life to follow God himself in human form.

Jesus. That’s how you bear fruit, and this is the Christian life designed for you and designed for me as defined by Jesus himself, a life of fruitfulness. Paul is later, the apostle Paul is gonna riff on this teaching of Jesus. Uh, in Galatians five when he’s gonna actually describe the fruit of this. So what is the fruit?

What, what fruit do we bear? What does that look like? In Galatians five, this is how Paul defines it. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So the promise of Jesus is simple. Follow Jesus, become a person of love, and follow Jesus. Become a person of joy. Follow Jesus, become a person of peace in season and out of season.

I think if the person described in Psalm one, right, Psalm one, the very first Psalm in the book of Psalms says, the one, uh, who follows the way of the righteous, whose delight is in the law of the Lord. Right. They’re, they’re not the ones that walk in the way of the wicked. They don’t weigh or live the way of evil, wicked people against God.

They actually live the way of God. It says they’re like a tree planted besides still waters who produces fruit in its season. Everything they do prospers in seasons of suffering. You have joy in season of hurts, relational loneliness. You have love in seasons of anxiety, pain, and unknowing. You have peace, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.

And yet, while this is true life described by Jesus, this is far from the reality of our day-to-day experience, at least for me. And we try to be more patient. Um, And it works for a while. Uh, until we’re attacked by people really testing our patients, we try to be more loving until we’re exhausted and incapable of actually spreading love to others, even sometimes to ourselves.

We try to be more joyful until one more piece of bad news pushes us past our own physical, natural human capacity for joy. We try to be more gentle until we’re criticized, chastised, or irritated to no end. In other words, in our lived in experience, we are not people of good fruit. We are people overcome by our flesh.

And so how do we change? Right? How do we accept and live out this teaching of Jesus? We believe the teachings of Jesus. Don’t just have application for people then, but for us today that they communicate something about what true reality is. Jesus says, I’m the way the truth. And the life. In other words, if you wanna know what life is really supposed to be like, you wanna know what’s really true in the world around you and about yourself.

Listen to my teachings. Jesus says, I’m the vine. You can produce fruit. How? Well the key is a word mentioned 11 times in this teaching of Jesus. This is a Bible study tip. If you’re reading the Bible, uh, and you want to know what’s important, look for words that are repeated. Uh, this is basic kind of understand.

You wanna know what’s being communicated. You wanna know what the main idea of something is, especially in the New Testament, uh, Paul’s letters, but also through the gospels. Uh, look at the repeated words in 17 verses. This block of teaching from Jesus, 11 times one verb is repeated over and over and over again.

It’s the Greek word meno in your translation. It’s the word remain or more commonly. And the word I like better cuz it sounds a little more poetic. Um, abide, how do we bear fruit? We abide in Jesus simple. How do we overcome sin? We abide in Jesus. How do we mature in our faith? We abide in Jesus. Which begs the question, what does it mean to abide?

How do you do that? You’re a pragmatic person. What? How? Tomorrow is a Monday, Monday’s coming. What do I do when I’m in the middle of my work meeting? How do I abide in Jesus when I’m frustrated with my spouse or the kids? How do I abide in Jesus? Well, the Greek word meno literally means to make something your home, to dwell in a place and actually stay there.

And so the picture of following Jesus, that Jesus himself is painting for us, is one where we are always at home in the presence of God in a long and frustrating meeting at work and at home, and in the presence of God. In a heated argument with your spouse at the same time at home, in the presence of God, driving to work, doing mundane chores, caring for your children, doing homework, sitting in class, whatever it is, and in the presence of God at home attached to Jesus, like a branch on a vine.

So is there practice from the wave? I mean, is abiding an actual practice? Is there something we can do to actually abide? Um, well, yes and no. Yes. On, on the short term, sort of day-to-day, if you want to actually try something, this isn’t in your together guide or anything like that. I just cause I, for a lot of different reasons.

But I, this is, there is something you can do, uh, to abide, uh, because to abide in Jesus is simply to reorient our entire lives simply, simply to reorient our entire lives, our thoughts, our attention, our devotion, our very wills to the person of Jesus. To return to Jesus every moment of every day. Dallas Willard, the Christian philosophers.

Is this the first and Mo most basic thing we can do and must do is to keep God before our minds. This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in thus practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to him. In the early time of our practicing, we may be well challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God.

But these are habits, not the law of gravity and can be broken. A new grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps towards keeping God before us. This is what Dallas Willard later calls inhaling the reality of the kingdom of God. What Brother Lawrence, a 17th century CARite monk calls the practice of the presence of God, or what Paul himself calls in First Thessalonians five 17 praying without ceasing.

It’s the practice of constantly in your mind, every day turning your attention to Jesus throughout scripture. This is also called meditation in the early church. This is called contemplation Con. Con. The contemplative practice is the idea of taking something, and in two weeks we’re gonna be starting our scripture series, and we’re gonna look at how do you actually not just study and read scripture, but meditate on scripture?

This is how you do it. You, you take a piece of scripture and the, the Hebrew word for meditate literally means to chew on, right? So you chew on it, you’re mulling it over in your mind, day after day, moment by moment. That is the process of abiding, thinking about God, reorienting your life, your habits, your practices around the person of Jesus.

So yes, you can abide on a day-to-day level. And if you’re interested in doing that, if you want, uh, tips or practices or, or help or you have questions about what that looks like, um, we can chat afterwards. But also, there is no one single practice of abiding because every practice is a practice of abiding.

So, like Dave said, our church is centered around being formed by Jesus together for others. That’s our vision statement. If you wanna use that language, that’s what we’re about here. That’s why we gather and we, we preach the word of God. And why we worship and sing songs together and live in community is because we want that to form us together, not just in isolation, but together.

And we want to do that for others. We want to bear fruit. We want our church to be a community of people transformed into the image of Jesus because of our proximity to Jesus. And so the practices are a means to that end. They are not an end. To themselves. In other words, we don’t Sabbath just because we want to be restful people.

We Sabbath so that we can learn how to abide. We don’t read our Bibles and study scripture so that we can know a lot of the bi, the Bible. We read our Bibles and study scripture so that we can abide, so that we’re transformed by it. We don’t fast and we don’t pray so that we can, um, have inner peace and a good diet.

We fast and we pray so that we learn how to abide, how to converse with God and follow him, and abide in him, live in him. Make him the, the center orientation of our day-to-day lives with our minds, our wills and our bodies. Every practice is meant to guide us and lead us into that space, to become people formed by Jesus, through our abiding in Jesus, together as a community for the sake of our neighborhoods, our city, and the entire world to aide in Jesus is to recenter our entire being on Jesus.

Through the practices of Jesus. What Jesus is communicating here is a holistic interrelationship remain in me, and I remain in you. This isn’t a thing where you can lose yourself. We’re not, that’s not what Jesus is talking about. We’re not saying like, you better do these things or else Jesus is not gonna remain in you.

He’s gonna leave you. That’s not what’s being communicated. What, what Jesus is saying is you want to have an intimate relationship with me, then have an intimate relationship with me, right? Make your relationship with me the center of your being. The, the thing that your schedule orients around, not just with your minds on Sunday or your voices, but also with your habits, with your time, with your wills, your desires, following Paul’s command to center your thought life on what is good, what is honorable, what is true, what is pure, what is lovely, what is commendable.

That’s your mind, your heart, meaning your deep inner li inner life, your desires and your will oriented towards Jesus. And your body, your physical body through practices like fasting and abstinence and things like that, but also your daily habits and your schedule. How you, what you do with your time, how you live in your body, and this is what we call spiritual formation.

Now, this is the process of spiritual formation. It is the transfer of God’s love, God’s joy, and God’s peace. All things promised in this teaching directly to you. Just like the transfer of life from a vine to its branches, attach yourself to Jesus and bear fruit. Orient your inner life to the one who gives you life and your outer life will follow.

This is a reflection of the truth that all good leaders know. You lead more out of who you are than out of what you do. Jesus knows that if you are gonna change the world, if you’re gonna bear fruit and carry the good news of the gospel, or even just survive your Monday, That’s gonna come not just from what you do, but who you are at a deep, intimate, personal level.

That’s the part of you that Jesus wants access to. And honestly, this is really hard. Um, and it’s hard because it takes time. Discipleship to Jesus is a lifelong process. This is not like a one time go to church and have everything fixed. We live in a world of instant gratification. You know this, right? If you’re bored, stream anything, at the click of a remote, if you have a question, Google it, and you have the wealth of knowledge from all of world’s history at your fingertips, in your pockets, you’re stressed.

Spend a morning in prayer and hope it carries you over to noon. It doesn’t work that way. Abiding in Jesus is a slower process than that. It takes a lifetime. It’s what Eugene Peterson calls a long obedience in the same direction. It is not. I practiced Sabbath once and now feel closer to Jesus. Although I pray and hope that happens.

It is a life of practicing Sabbath. It’s a life of meditating on scripture. It’s morning after morning, day after day, moment by moment, turning your attention to God, making space in your weekly schedule to abide with Jesus on Sabbath, making space in your morning for scripture to abide in Jesus by reading the word may even making space in your budget.

We’re gonna talk one of our later practices of generosity, making space in your budget to abide in Jesus by giving freely from what he has already given you. Now, over a day, you might not notice a difference, and I know many I man. This is why the practices are so hard. This is why you’ve given up, is you tried silence and solitude for a week and it didn’t do anything.

Or you tried reading your Bible, you tried meditating on scripture, memorizing verses going to church, living in community, giving generously, and you don’t feel like anything has happened. That’s because this takes time. It won’t happen over a day or a week month, but over a year maybe. Over 10 years, definitely over a lifetime, and you are a completely new person.

The theological word for this, uh, is sanctification, right? This is living out the reality, becoming who God intended for you to be. Not through your own efforts, but through your proximity to Jesus. You become a person who’s not anxious, a person of love, a person of joy, and a person of peace. The bottom line is this, producing fruit does not happen by our efforts.

It doesn’t happen by trying hard not to faint. We have an old saying at our church, uh, I don’t know, maybe it’s not old trying to behave like Jesus leads to death, but training to become like Jesus leads to life. Right. We don’t become people of love by willing ourselves to become better people of love.

We can’t force ourselves to become more patient by just buckling down and trying to grow and produce patience. We don’t become gentle people who are kind and faithful by forcing ourselves. We can’t make ourselves do that, but we can align ourselves with the one who is loving, who is patient, and who is kind.

We learn from him. We live with him. We follow him. We abide by him. The producing fruit happens by our attaching our whole selves to Jesus, redirecting our minds, our thoughts and our attitudes towards Jesus by redirecting our hearts, our devotion and our wills to Jesus, redirecting our bodies, our habits, and our schedules towards Jesus.

Redirecting the whole of who we are to the one who created us. Us to the one who sustains us to the one who teaches us, and the one who loves us every moment of every day. I wanna share two really quick thoughts before we close. Cause I know that this can bring up a lot of questions and I know there’s, uh, at least in my life, this is really frustrating.

Um, first abiding always involves pruning. Notice Jesus, uh, in verse two says, every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes and he prunes every branch that does produce fruit so that it will produce more fruit. It’s not just the ones who aren’t attached to Jesus, that in this metaphor that God the father cuts off.

It’s the people who are producing fruit that, that God actually prunes. Pruning is a hard process, like we said in the beginning. It happens by cutting branches. You’re trimmed to no end. Meaning to abide in Jesus is to recenter your attention and devotion on the person of Jesus, which by definition means to turn yourself away from the things that currently have your attention and your devotion.

And it’s a painful process. It’s, uh, it gets purification, it’s pruning, it’s sanctification. It’s what psychologists called detachment. It’s the severing of things, the surrendering of things that you fear. You cannot live without. The things that hold your mind that you are holding onto. And, and if you are in a season of, of pruning where it feels like you are being buffeted, it feels like you are suffering.

Paul says he feels like he was buffeted by Satan, by their just attacks and antagonisms against him. It’s not because God hates you, it’s because God’s pruning you. God’s trying to teach you. He’s trying to help you produce more fruit in a way that you could never even imagine. Jesus later says, in this teaching, I have told you these things so that you can be a productive worker in my kingdom.

No, he doesn’t say that. He says, I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. The end of the process of pruning is joy. It’s joy that comes from deep abiding in Jesus. A second thought, everyone abides in something and what you are abiding in is producing fruit, um, but it’s bad fruit.

And in Galatians five, before Paul gives the fruit of the spirit, he talks about the fruit of the flesh. Your life is perfectly designed to give you the results that you’re getting. So what fruit are you getting? Are you tired? Are you anxious? Are you fearful? Are you living in sin that you cannot overcome?

What has your attention and your devotion, whatever it is, Jesus is so much better. And why don’t we stand and respond?

We’re gonna respond. We have a couple ways that we do that. Um, we’re gonna sing here in a minute. If you wanna respond just by surrendering to God, you can do that. Um, we also have an opportunity for you to respond by kneeling. We have these knees up here so your knees don’t hurt on the tile. Um, There’s nothing magical that happens when you, when you, when you kneel up here.

It’s just a posture of surrender. It’s a way for you to, um, with your body, again, a holistic embodiment, actually give the things up to God that you are abiding in. Um, or you can take communion. We have communion set up on either side. Uh, partake, abide in Jesus by, by symbolically taking, um, from his, from his body and his blood.

Um, well, why don’t we pray right now and just invite God to convict us and to challenge us and then we’ll, we’ll respond by singing.

Father, son Holy Spirit, we invite you into this space.

And God, we invite you. We’re not in asking you to come to a place that you already aren’t you. We know you’re everywhere, but we’re welcoming you into, um, this space. We’re turning our attention towards you. We are abiding in you in this moment. It as individuals, but also as a community, as as people who are attached to the same vine.

And so God, we ask that you would, um, that you would give us life and that in giving us life, you would show us the, the things that we’re trying to find life in that are not you. The vines that are not actually producing good fruit. The vines that are really dead, the things that we’re so attached to that we have our attention and our devotion.

God, we just ask that you reveal that to us. We ask that you would do that as a church, as a community, as a whole. Just that you would point out our collective idols, the things that we’re attached to, the things that are holding us back as a community from following you, and producing fruit that extends beyond these walls of this cafeteria and into the neighborhoods around us.

And God, as hard as it is, we ask for pruning. We ask for you to, um, to reveal and cut out the things that, uh, that are, that are, we’re holding onto so tightly that, um, we’re trying to find life in, that we just can’t find life in. And at the end of all of this, God, we’re asking for joy. That we would be defined by an intimate experience of a joy that doesn’t make sense to the world around us.

It doesn’t even make sense to ourselves, but that we know is real because it’s a byproduct. It’s a fruit of our abiding, our remaining, our centering, our whole selves on you. God, we thank you for the sacrifice of your son, for the access to you that we have. Through his sacrifice, through his life and his death, we acknowledge our, um, our deficiencies.

We acknowledge our sin. And we bring that before you. Now,

we thank you for this time. We pray all this in your name, amen.