Abiding in the Vine

Last week we talked about the eternal divine life that has been extended to us through Christ. If you missed out on the Easter Service, I would encourage you to go back and listen to have a better understanding of the background of this sermon. Our text is John 15 where Jesus is talking about being the vine and we are the branches. Why does Jesus emphasize abiding and remaining attached to Him when the modern Christianity often times majors on all the things we should/shouldn't do. Can we truly live by the life of Christ through a deep heart connection to Him?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Alright, this is the preacher and the mower. A preacher retired and moved to the country to enjoy his life and practice his hobby of yard work. Needing a lawnmower, he headed into town to buy one. On the way, he saw a sign advertising a lawnmower for sale. He stopped at the house and a young lad came out to greet him. The preacher asked him about the lawnmower, and the kid said it was behind the house. So the two of them went around back to look at the mower. The engine was sputtering along at idle speed. The preacher increased the speed of the engine and mowed a few strips, satisfied that the mower would do the job. They settled on a price of $100. Later in the day, the young lad was riding his bicycle when he spied the preacher pulling on the engine starter rope over and over. Kid stopped and watched for a couple of minutes. He asked, What's wrong? The reply came, I can't get the mower started. Do you know how? The kid said, Yep. Well, how do you do it? Tell me, the preacher yelled. The kid replied, you have to cuss at it. The preacher rose up indignantly. Now you listen here, I'm a preacher and I've never I never did cuss. Not saying, well, not saying that I have, but I've forgotten how to do it altogether after all these years. So the kid with a very wise look on his face for his years said, Preacher, you keep on pulling that rope, and it'll all come back to you. Alright, I'm gonna just go a little bit over what I talked about last week, if you were here. The eternal life of God and the breath and the spirit of God and how we are now one with God's spirit. And I started back in the garden, where man's rebellion, and by it we spiritually died. Adam and God shared the same spirit. And that was the animating marker that Adam went from just being a lump of form of dirt to a living being. Isn't that interesting how he made us into a being and not a doing? Like to be in relationship with God is to be, to do, to abide. Like it's not a doing, but a place of resting in who you really are, who God is for you. Anyway, we'll get back to that. So man rebelled and he spiritually died in the garden, right? And then he was forced out of the garden because he no longer could have that communion and relationship with God or eat of the tree of life. So, how marking is it that Jesus, now a man full of the Holy Spirit, so he was born of the Spirit, and now he is the eternal life of God amongst men. Again, after thousands of years, no man had had the Spirit of God living inside of him. Now we we understand that he would come upon different people at certain times for different tasks or abilities, but he was not like living in any man since Adam and Eve fell. So now all of a sudden Jesus shows up, and Jesus is born of the Spirit and of a virgin, Mary. And so now this is the first man since Adam that has had the Spirit of God living in him. So now this man lives under the bondage of sin and destruction around him. Like Jesus walked in a world that was submitted to the effects of sin, death, and rebellion against God. But he had the Spirit of God in him. And so he is crucified, and it says he was crucified outside of a garden. But then he was buried and rose in a garden, which is where he also meets a woman. So this reverses the whole story of Adam's place with the Lord in the garden fall and subsequent pushing out of that garden, which represented the connection, the fellowship, the communion with God. And now you have Jesus who's born outside of a garden and ends up dying, being buried in a garden and raising again. So it's like a rewinding the whole story of the fall in Jesus Christ. Even to the point that the first person that he restores relationship with, the first person that sees him in this glorified state is a woman. Who was the first one to eat of the fruit and rebel against God. So all of a sudden, in this one scene, Jesus Christ is reversed. The whole effects of sin, destruction, and death in mankind. If we will but receive him. So now, through Christ, we can have relationship with God like Adam and Eve had in the garden. His spirit now lives in those who believe. And his spirit brings with it eternal life. And so there was a couple of verses I pointed out last time of now we are, we have the same spirit as Jesus Christ. If the spirit of the one who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will quicken your mortal body through the spirit who dwells in you. Alright, so now we are back to that being, living being like Adam. We're not living doings, we're living beings. And so when we look in John 17, verse 3, Jesus is praying to his Father, and it says, And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. This eternal life, this life of the Spirit, is this communion and relationship with the Spirit and the nature of God. It is not a destination. I've said this many times. Eternal life is not a destination. It is a reality that we can live in now. So, with all that being said, I want to, I feel to apologize on behalf of the church or the Christian religion, pastors, leaders, and even like the framework that we've built kind of in the West here of what church is and Christianity that directly or indirectly taught or made you believe that the very center of Christianity is about anything other than our personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. That's the center. That's the bullseye, that's the point, that's the purpose. And without that, we have lost our way, we have lost the ethos and the very life of what it means to follow Jesus Christ. The Sunday experience is to propel you into personal experience. It is to teach, reveal, and model relationship and life with God. That's what this is supposed to be. Like this isn't just like a check of a box. This is supposed to be maybe some ideas and some fuel in your tank to push you along, to encourage you into knowing Jesus Christ for yourself, living out from this divine life that God has made available to each and every one of us. And that is my heart and focus. I think if if you probably noticed, I'm a little different in the way that I present the things that I do, maybe the things that I say, but I feel like at this point in my life, being 40, which to some of you is older than I should be, and others to you too young to yet know anything. It's that weird place where to most, to half the congregation, I'm ancient. And to the other, I'm not even started yet. So in all of that, I have found that what actually is what actually works and brings me closer to Jesus Christ is what I want to talk about. And anything that's just what I call filler, I really don't have any time for. And what unfortunately we get a lot of times anymore is a lot of filler and a little bit of good, and then you gotta expend all this energy trying to find out what's even usable in what people are preaching and teaching and TikTok and reels and the little whatever you can cram into so many characters to make a point or to get people to react. That's unfortunately the day and age we live in. So a while ago we talked about John chapter 15. I just kind of mentioned it in a sermon, and what I was talking about was kind of like, you remember the building blocks? He says, as the father has loved me, I've loved you, so there's a block. And then as the father has loved me, okay? And then the second block, I have loved you, abide in my love. And then he says, if you obey my commandments, you abide in my love, just as I have obeyed my father's commandments and abide in him's love. And if you think of it like an arch, right? So that is in essence what I believe the center of Christian life and experience really is, is to know God, not just in a knowing, but in a heart knowing. So I want to go back there and begin to delve further into this idea, this concept. Like to know God. What does that mean? To experience Him, what does that mean? To live by the life of Christ, what does that mean? And guess what? I don't have all the answers. Aha! There's the other trick. I am not your answer to this. But I can tell you some things that have changed my life, that have started me upon that journey, and that's kept my gaze all these four years. Alright, let's go to John chapter 15. And again, this is within just a few days of Jesus dying. Um like I said last week, the majority of well, almost half of John was written in the last week of Jesus' life. And so these are some of his last words to his disciples. These are things that really stand out of what he wants them to know above everything else. And he says, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. Or another translation is he lifts it up. Because that was a practice in taking care of a vineyard, or there would be branches that would fall down and get in the shade. Well, we all understand that if there's not enough sunlight, stuff will not produce. So the idea is that they would tie these branches up or hang them up so that they could get sunlight, so they could actually bear fruit. Okay, alright, and they're going on. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Aha. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the true vine, and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples. And then here's our verses again. As the Father loved me, I have loved you. I also have loved you, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I've kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. Full, lacking nothing. Completely satisfied. Overflow, abundance. These are all things that we would like to mark our lives, right? Or even our community. I think it was I didn't know you were gonna sing that first song, but it's it's true. Like God, oh man, I can't even remember the course, but it's really good. Essentially, like, God heal this land, restore this nation, bring life, bring abundance, bring goodness. Okay. This is all true, right? Do we who doesn't want that? Good. See, I didn't ask the other way because someone raises their hands anyway, and then it'll be like a negative. It's a joke. It's okay. But we all want that, right? And so does God. That's the nature of God. He is goodness, he is love, he is peace. Those are the things we want to see in our communities and in our lives, right? Now let's look back at these verses again. Verse 4 Abide in me and I in you. All the other commandments, like in all the other things happening in these verses, are the outcome of abiding. Okay? The vine dresser, the father, is the vine dresser, and every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

So have you ever seen like a wheat plant out there like groaning like I'm gonna make fruit? Oh, there's another, there's another head of grain. Does it, I mean, it just abides, right? It abides in the soil, it takes in the nutrients, and it produces. It is not focused on producing, it is focused on its nutrient requirement. Okay? And so we we start to look at this, I mean, in the past, I would read this and I'd be like, oh man, every branch that doesn't bear fruit, it cuts off. And you know, if you're not attached to me, I burn you. And those are like the overall themes in my head of like, don't get burned, don't get cut off. And even if you do bear fruit, he's gonna cut you off anyway. So you bear more fruit. And it's like you're kind of like, yes, Lord. But look, if you look at it, everything else that's going on is going on in which everything else happening is a direct response to the connection, the abiding in Christ, in God. So the fact that some part of your life isn't producing fruit does not mean that you need to try harder. It means you need to abide more. Uh if you're not connected, he's talking here about you don't believe in Christ. You haven't received him as your savior. That then is a disconnect, right? But what do we see in our own lives, okay? Full disclosure. I believe in divine healing, which means that God can heal people divinely. I've seen bones mend in a moment, I've seen cancer leave people, I've seen tumors disappear, I've seen chronic skin conditions leave and never come back. I don't have a ground anymore to stand and say that he doesn't do it, because I've seen it too often. I don't have any leg to stand on. But it gets super annoying when I have a cold for a week and it just keeps getting worse. And I know I shouldn't have this until it needs to go, and then by Jesus scribes I'm healed, and then it just sits around. So here's part of the problem is that if we're not abiding, we start to believe that the problem is on God's side. So have you ever come into a room and you flip the switch on and no light comes on? Has anyone ever done that? Two, three, four. Wow. Oops. So uh we can try that again. No, I'm have you ever thought in that moment when you flick on the lights? Oh no, I wonder if I wonder if uh Fort Peck Dam has completely dried up and there's no water and there's no powdered over at the power plant. Does that like, is that in the first three thoughts that you have? Okay. Good. Because that would be odd, right? We would we would all question your mental processes if that was your your knee-jerk reaction. Maybe all the coal just suddenly got used up and there's no more coal plant, coal generation, or a nuclear facility blew up or something. There's no lights coming on in my house. Where do you first start to look, Greg, great guy?

unknown 18:32

Light bulb.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Light bulb. That's the like easy, that's the lowest hanging fruit, right? That's it. The simplest one. And if you need to buy more, you can oh, you don't want it. There's a sale going on right now. Um light bulbs. Um starting now. So we would question the light bulb, right? We're not going to question the power generation plan, right? But in our Christian walk, so oftentimes we skip the light bulb and go straight to his god. You know? Like we'll we'll we'll sit and we'll kind of go along with the news and the negative local network of news, which is always super accurate and clear. And we'll start to latch on to what we hear or see, and we'll start to believe that, right? And then we wonder like when that stuff kind of just keeps happening over and over. We think, man, this the power plant of the spirit life that I'm supposed to be connected with must be down because this stuff keeps happening, right? We immediately in our hearts go to, ah, there must have been God. Why don't we ever check the light bulb? You know, we are now the lights of the world, right? When our lights dim, why don't we ever wonder if the connection is the problem more than the one we're being connected to? Does that make sense? Okay, so abide in me. Another translation says remain, okay? To stay, to stay connected. So okay, I'm going to just step back and just put these into like layman's terms and like my own my own picture that I have in my head. Alright? There's this vine. Well, I'm not super familiar with vines, so I'm just going to think of a tree. So there's a tree, and Jesus is the trunk. Do you know what's really interesting about like a trunk or the vine? It doesn't produce any fruit. It's the branches. So Jesus Christ has chosen to only produce fruit through us in the earth. We're the limiting factor. Okay? It's not, if you've noticed Jesus isn't walking physically in the earth anymore. But yet he is in us. Okay, so you have the trunk and then you have a branch. And the size of that branch is directly proportional to what it can produce to where it's joined at the trunk. Because all the nutrients for that branch come from the trunk. So the trunk doesn't produce any fruit, the branches do. But what determines the fruit of the branch is the connection to the trunk. Okay? So my question more now these days is, Lord, what needs to happen with my connection with you? Because I'm not stoked about all the fruit. He's the vine dresser. He's taken care of and doing all his gardening stuff, right? So we understand that the soil's good. And Jesus Christ and that power that comes through us that I talked about. Last week, the eternal life of God that lives in us now. When we don't see that manifesting in our lives and the fruit, now I'm like, God, what's the connection problem? Because it's not you, it must be somewhere between me and you. Okay? And that's why when Adam became a living soul, he became a living being. Because this abiding, connected relationship with God is where everything else of the Lord flows from. This is where it comes through. It's not, I'm gonna say this. Good doctrine is important. But you can have perfect doctrine and no connection. There are whole like groups of people who get together and go through like the Psalms and dissect those things down, like to knowing what type of rhythm and rhyme and they are poetically in the Hebrew language, and they don't even believe in Jesus. They're in awe of some scripture that they take and analyze logically and don't have any relationship to the one who originally authored it through man. And we too can become distracted by things of the world that keep us from that connection with Jesus Christ. Now, this connection is not just coming to church. This is a great place to maybe get stirred up. Maybe I'm stirring a little too hard right now, but when you settle, somebody comes and stirs it up, and then what happens? It gets all diffused again, right? And so that's what I'm hoping this does to you. I'm hoping the Spirit stirs your heart. Like, God, I want that connection. Because I want to live in a place that I feel peace and contentment and joy. And what comes out of me is not me, it's actually you flowing through me. And that that connection with you grows so that more of you can be shown through my life and my community and in the ground itself. So, like the song we were singing, yes, God does all those things. But what do we know about the trunk? It doesn't produce fruit. So all those things are coming through us as a body, but also individually. And so God's desire is that we abide. And he says it over and over all through these verses: abide, abide, abide, remain, stay, stay here. And so, what does that look like? Well, I would say it's intimacy with God. What does intimacy with God mean? I think it's basically this. When you share your heart, who you really are. Your failures, your joys, your fears, your accomplishments, all of it. When you share those with someone, and they share their heart with you, that's intimacy. That is connection. Now, when we start to do that with God, it grows that connection so that the life of God can flow through us. Because if we don't know him on a heart level, we will always question his character, his love. So an example is over the past few years, I've really, I guess coming back here, I'm exposed to the lives of people that I kind of got disconnected from in college. So I would say from the people I went to college with who were pursuing the Lord or were professing believers, probably about 50% of them are like do not believe in Jesus or are what you could call like a nominal Christian. Like they don't really believe, yeah, Jesus is a good guy, but that's it. So about 50% of the people that I knew as Christians are no longer Christians. Of the 50% that do love Jesus and pursue him, probably about a third of them don't go to church or do something like a formal church type thing. Okay? So we're talking about a minority of people I knew that actually follow the Lord. And so one thing, a friend of mine, we were talking to, and he's like, whoa, you still love Jesus? And I'm like, yeah, you do too. And I'm like, oh, you made it, you know? And he started talking about these friends of his who were really passionately following the Lord, and he said they started to deconstruct their faith. Deconstructionism. And that's something that's pretty prolific right now. But what's really interesting to me is it's so foreign to me because I'm like, wow. Like, I cannot deconstruct if my wife exists. I know my wife. I have a relationship with her. I I I know her. Right? If you were to tell me she doesn't exist, she doesn't love you, uh, she's in it for herself and all the money that you have, which sorry, sorry on that end of things, um, it it would, it's ludicrous. Like it doesn't even, it you would never use that terminology in a relationship. But you can in concepts and ideology, in arguments. So what it just shows me is they didn't ever really know Jesus. They they were never they never had, maybe they did, they had a connection, but it never grew. They were in an environment that that helped help them along in the idea of being a Christian and we like this because all these people that we're friends with are the same way. But in the end of it, they they didn't have enough connection with the Lord to treat that relationship something other than like a cerebral attainment. Does that make sense? The best thing we can do is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ that becomes so real to us that if someone were to question if God exists, you laugh at them in the face. Like I said, I can't not believe that God healed, that the power of God heals people, because I've seen it over and over and over. At the same time, I've seen it not manifest. So there's this struggle, right, in my mind. Why am I sick? This is stupid. I hardly ever get sick that speaker. And it's like, oh, I need to abide. I just need to go back to, Lord, I'm frustrated about this. I don't know what's going on, I need your wisdom, I need your help, but ultimately I surrender to you. So there was a time when me and two other buddies we went abroad, and when you're in other cultures and exposed to different ways of thinking and societies and stuff, you realize that our culture, by and large, is founded upon like enough, there's enough Christian principles and stuff mixed into our culture where people generally understand the idea of there is a God. Or they believe like there is not a God. But in other cultures, they have little to no concept of a God. Like in a Japanese culture. You start to talk to them about God and they're like, a what? You're not, you know, it's a who. I mean, a who-wa. You know, it's like so far, you kind of are left with, how do you even talk to these people about God? Because they don't even have, they don't even have a place to put them on their shelf, right? And so it was really challenging to me and these two other friends to come back into our society and be like, God, it seems like you don't even exist in that culture. These people don't even know about you. So you start to tell them about Jesus, and you realize as you're talking, you're telling them, you need to believe in a dude that lived 2,000 years ago that died in Israel, and you'll be saved. And they're like, how does that make sense? And you're like, it doesn't. I know, it sounds crazy. So we all came back, and one friend went, peace. I don't believe in Jesus. I don't believe in this. This is a joke. Oh God. The other one was like, well, I think there's like a lot of ways to God, like Jesus is one, and there's just a lot of ways. We just don't, the Bible's not really a thing, but you know, I still believe in Jesus. Okay. So I'm sitting there with God, and I remember the day because I was like, I don't even know if you're good. And and God was like, I I I was just complaining to him about it. And he says, Do you believe that I'm good? I said, I don't even know. You know, I'm being like a snot-nosed kid. And then he just repeated, Do you believe I'm good? And you know, you kind of take a step back and you say, if you're not good, then there is no good. I am lost. Without you, there is no good. So I believe you're good. He says, alright. Do you love me? And I'm like, man, that's a hard question right now. But if I just shut out everything else, it's just he and I, do you love me? Yes. And he says, okay, let's go. That's that's the dialogue in my head. What do you mean, let's go? He never answered the question. That's because when you abide in him, it's not about the answers to the question, it's about that relationship with him. The giving of your heart, and he gives you his heart back. And you give him, this is this is who what I'm feeling, this is who I am, this is what I'm struggling with. And then you wait. You sense that he wants to say something back into your situation, and that begins to grow your attachment to God. You say, Well, I've never, I don't think I've ever heard God. Ah, you have. You just don't recognize it. It's okay. Well, I don't, I don't really see how I could do that. Well, I will tell you, I'm not going to give you a bullet point list of things to do, but I will say, start with what moves your heart and then invite Jesus into it. Maybe that's fishing. Maybe that's listening to a certain song or a certain passage of scripture. There's just something in your heart that goes, man, this is really good. Man, this really speaks to me. You know? Um, like Psalms 23, maybe just start there. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. And instead of letting all those little dumb thoughts come in, like, well, I do lack. Well, I wish I did have more of this. Just start to think, wow, how much he loves me, to shepherd me, to want me to live in green pastures. And then maybe you have a question, Lord, I don't feel like I'm living in a green pasture right now. I feel like it's dusty, dirty, and it's not fun. And then just wait. Just say, God, I want to know what you want to say. This is how we exchange our heart with God. But the idea is there's a sense that we also have to listen. It says, be still and know that I'm God. Be still. In what way? Well, usually our minds are running pretty fast. But if we can start asking God questions and then just sitting, even just for 30 seconds, and just think, what do you want to say, God? And note random thoughts or ideas that come into your mind. And just say, okay, fine. If this is really you, God, what do you mean by telling me about this? What is this thought that's coming to my mind? And start to have that dialogue with him. And so that was what I felt to share with you guys today. But over the next few weeks, I'm going to unpack this a little more. Because you'll find all through scripture, if you start doing the searches, it's like all these scriptures that are talking about in Christ, in him. In him we live and move and have our being. Blessed be the God and Father, our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. What is this in thing? What is this abiding thing? What is this being thing? What is that? How do we expand that connection with God? And guess what? The enemy's ultimate goal, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, is to neck that connection down as much as possible. To make that branch as like weak and ill-formed as it can. Because if he can get, if he can start to neck down the love that God is trying to get into you and through your life, then he can ultimately win part of the battle. Even though he loses the war, he can partially win the battle in your life to keep you from receiving the life of God, the peace of God, the goodness of God. Okay. So this is an important thing. This is what all of hell is coming against the church for is this connection of the divine, that place of being and receiving the life and goodness of God. Alright? So thank you, God, for this time. We thank you for everyone that's here today. Lord, I pray that something in what I've shared lands and that you would continue that dialogue with each person here throughout this week, Lord, that we would be overwhelmed by your desire to connect with us and to have your life flow through us. And Lord, we receive that life. We receive the best that you have for us and our community. Lord God, I thank you that this year is going to be marked by timely rains that are going to come at the perfect time. And I thank you, God, for everyone here. In Jesus' name, amen.