SPEAKER_01: We'll be reading from the book of John 15, 1 through to 17.
SPEAKER_01: I am the vine, I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser.
SPEAKER_01: Every branch in me that does not bear fruit it takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit it prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
SPEAKER_01: Abide in me and high in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine.
SPEAKER_01: Neither can you, unless you abide in me.
SPEAKER_01: I am the vine, you are the branches.
SPEAKER_01: Whoever abides in me and high him, it is that bears much fruit.
SPEAKER_01: For apart from me you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_01: If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers.
SPEAKER_01: And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.
SPEAKER_01: If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
SPEAKER_01: By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.
SPEAKER_01: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
SPEAKER_01: Abide in my love.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
SPEAKER_01: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
SPEAKER_01: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
SPEAKER_01: You are my friends if you do what I command you.
SPEAKER_01: No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.
SPEAKER_01: For all that I have had from my father I have made known to you.
SPEAKER_01: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your food should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
SPEAKER_01: These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to you.
SPEAKER_03: If you joined us while we were singing, my name is Mark.
SPEAKER_03: I'm one of the leaders here at the church.
SPEAKER_03: And if you're visiting with us, you're particularly welcome.
SPEAKER_03: We are continuing in our series through John's Gospel uh through Easter time.
SPEAKER_03: And uh if you have a Bible with you or a phone, if you can look up John chapter 15, uh that passage that G.
SPEAKER_03: Day read uh for us, we're going to be looking at that.
SPEAKER_03: Uh uh one of the things that if you're perhaps new to uh to reading the Bible or to the Christian things, that you might not understand about the Bible is that the Bible's one story.
SPEAKER_03: Uh yes, it is uh a collection of different books, 66 different books, uh written over the span of about 1500 years in three different languages uh on three different continents uh by about 40 or so different authors, but it has one story, one overarching narrative.
SPEAKER_03: And that story is the story of uh of God's work in the world and uh his uh his plan to uh to redeem humanity, to bring a human, uh, to bring people back to himself.
SPEAKER_03: Uh Genesis one uh is uh the account of uh of creation that the Bible gives.
SPEAKER_03: Uh it is uh not uh necessarily a science textbook, but one of the things that it concludes in chapter one is it concludes with a blessing.
SPEAKER_03: God makes human beings, uh male and female, as the apex of creation, as the very high point uh of his work uh in creation.
SPEAKER_03: And at the very end of the chapter, he gives them a blessing.
SPEAKER_03: He blesses them and says, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
SPEAKER_03: Now, being fruitful is much more than creating more human beings, though that is part of it.
SPEAKER_03: Rather, it was a blessing that centered around the cultivation of all of creation, the creating of culture, of art and poetry, music, engineering, systems of justice, agriculture, sport, social cohesion, science, technology, technology, the humanities.
SPEAKER_03: It was God blessing human beings and saying, go out and make creation fruitful, like you would a garden that has been yet untilled, to go and to beautify it and cause it to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_03: You see, God at the very beginning wanted human beings to flourish in every way possible, along every axis that it is possible to flourish, to create, because they were made in the image of the Creator, as you and I are, to love because they were loved by the Lord who had made them.
SPEAKER_03: That was God's vision for humanity, and is why he blessed them at the end of Genesis chapter one.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, human beings, we, you and I, our first parents, we turned away from that vision for humanity.
SPEAKER_03: We wanted to create systems for our own glory.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, we wanted to decide for ourselves what was right and wrong.
SPEAKER_03: We would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
SPEAKER_03: The garden paradise was not good enough because we did not ultimately own it or rule it or control it as our own gods.
SPEAKER_03: And so we cut ourselves off from God's vision for ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: We cut ourselves off from Him as the source of our life and and fruitfulness, preferring rather to cultivate our own bitter fruit than to flourish under God's good rule.
SPEAKER_03: And so our hearts themselves became hard and bitter ground.
SPEAKER_03: And you have this experience, don't you?
SPEAKER_03: If you've ever been in a conflict with someone, if you're uh if you're in a relationship, you know, you uh you butt heads from time to time and you conflict with your your spouse, or if you fought with a uh with a parent or with a sibling, uh, you have this uh you have this fight, and one of the things that you you maybe kind of stop yourself and think, oh, why did I say that?
SPEAKER_03: Why did that come out?
SPEAKER_03: Why did I express that emotion?
SPEAKER_03: Why did it come out?
SPEAKER_02: Here's the answer because it was in there.
SPEAKER_02: It came out because it was in there.
SPEAKER_03: Why is it that I feel envy when someone does better than I do rather than celebrating with them?
SPEAKER_03: It is is it because that they made me to be envious?
SPEAKER_03: No, it came out because it was already in there.
SPEAKER_03: God in the Old Testament wasn't contented to uh to let humanity go its own way into destruction because he loves his image bearers.
SPEAKER_03: And so he began a process of uh of remaking his people, of gathering his people again.
SPEAKER_03: And he did that with the the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_03: You remember the Exodus, the uh journey through the Red Sea, you might have seen Prince of Egypt, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03: That is God remaking his people, establishing a new humanity that would flourish again under his good rule, bringing them, in a sense, back to uh back to the garden.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, if you ever read about the uh the designs of the the temple in Old Testament Israel, uh the embroidery and all of the imagery is it's made to look like a garden because he's bringing them back into Eden.
SPEAKER_03: And so God begins to remake humanity with the uh with the children of Israel, and yet over time the hardness of their hearts leads again to corruption and to a turning away from God.
SPEAKER_03: And the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament, writing about 700 years before the birth of Jesus, has this image in chapter five, and it is the image of the people of God as a vine.
SPEAKER_03: He says that God planted Israel like a like a vine, like a like a gardener who would seek to grow some grapes.
SPEAKER_03: He had been careful to protect it, to build a wall around it, to build a tower, to guard it, to put in the correct irrigation systems in order that it might flourish.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, despite the best efforts of God, the vine grower, Isaiah said that it yielded sour grapes.
SPEAKER_03: It yielded bad fruit.
SPEAKER_03: What is the bad fruit of Isaiah 5?
SPEAKER_03: Well, it uh it tells us, or Isaiah tells us in verse 7, uh God says, and he looked, or Isaiah says of God, he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed.
SPEAKER_03: He looked for righteousness, but behold an outcry.
SPEAKER_03: Instead of good fruit, there was the fruit of injustice, of bloodshed, of hostility, malice, envy, rancor, and hatred.
SPEAKER_03: The vine failed.
SPEAKER_03: Israel became full of injustice and bloodshed.
SPEAKER_03: And so the question began to arise: would God ever achieve the blessing that he promised in Genesis chapter one?
SPEAKER_03: Would his people ever truly flourish?
SPEAKER_03: Would the vine ever bear good fruit?
SPEAKER_02: Come with me on a walk in your mind.
SPEAKER_03: At the end of chapter 14, Jesus says to his disciples, rise, let us go from here.
SPEAKER_03: So I want you in your mind to get up out of that upper room, head down the stairs, and out into nighttime Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_03: It's early April, so the air is beginning to get a little bit warmer.
SPEAKER_03: It's Passover, that means that there's a full moon in the sky.
SPEAKER_03: Passover always happened at the full moon, and so the sky is quite bright.
SPEAKER_03: And you've stepped out with Jesus and the disciples as you're walking through those narrow streets of the old city of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_03: And they walk up again, one last time, up towards the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_03: Their nostrils begin to smell the scent of the smoke, and they see the gray blue plume rising above the walls of the sacrificial altar that burned day and night, particularly at Passover, a perpetual reminder that sin always needed to be atoned for.
SPEAKER_03: This idea that the Holy Spirit would come and in some unfathomable way join believers to Jesus inseparably.
SPEAKER_03: But Jesus is a master communicator, and so as he goes on that walk, knowing that that is floating around in their minds, he gives them an illustration of what it's like to be joined inseparably to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: I am the vine and you are my branches.
SPEAKER_03: The Holy Spirit grafts us into the vine so that we what bear fruit.
SPEAKER_03: What God has wanted ever since the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_03: The purpose for which he blessed humanity at the end of chapter one, that they would flourish as human beings under his good rule.
SPEAKER_03: It is a good human desire to bear fruit.
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure all of you here want to be fruitful in some way, whether that's in your family, in your career, in your relationships, how you're moving forward in the world.
SPEAKER_03: And these are good and right things that God has in view.
SPEAKER_03: But one of the little qualifiers that comes up a couple of times in John 15 is this idea of fruit that will last.
SPEAKER_03: The fruit of your career will eventually go, the fruit of your relationships will eventually go.
SPEAKER_03: So what's fruit that will last?
SPEAKER_03: What's fruit that will endure eternally?
SPEAKER_03: Well, the lasting fruit, the fruit that endures, it's the fruit of godliness.
SPEAKER_03: It's the fruit of a life that is becoming more and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: It is the fruit of a life that is seeing others coming to know him.
SPEAKER_03: That will never be taken away.
SPEAKER_03: That is fruit that lasts.
SPEAKER_03: That other people might be grafted into the vine, that others might come into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: That fruit will never fade.
SPEAKER_03: And so Jesus is encouraging us and saying we should desire this sort of fruit in our lives.
SPEAKER_03: Where does this fruit come from?
SPEAKER_03: If you're taking notes, this is probably the first main section.
SPEAKER_03: It's one of the uh the shorter ones, and I'm really just going to kind of press on the point that I've already been inferring.
SPEAKER_03: Where does the fruit come from?
SPEAKER_03: Well, you need to see and settle in your own heart and in your own mind that it comes from the vine.
SPEAKER_03: We so quickly become individualistic and think that fruitfulness is our own effort, or that we are our own vine, planted by ourselves, for ourselves.
SPEAKER_03: But one of the things that Jesus is saying here is that you need to understand the uh the relationship.
SPEAKER_03: There is a uh there's a subsidiarity to us.
SPEAKER_03: He is the vine, and we are what?
SPEAKER_03: We are the branches.
SPEAKER_03: That is, we are not the vine.
SPEAKER_03: The power that brings about fruit in our lives comes not ultimately from us.
SPEAKER_03: We must start here, or else we're back to our first parents, Adam and Eve, pretending that it's all about us.
SPEAKER_03: Remember who causes your growth.
SPEAKER_03: Remember who causes the growth of the church.
SPEAKER_03: It is not us, but the vine.
SPEAKER_03: We are his branches.
SPEAKER_03: Your own spiritual growth begins with an acknowledgement that your core productivity does not depend on you.
SPEAKER_02: That fruitfulness is not down to us.
SPEAKER_02: It comes from Jesus, the life-giving vine.
SPEAKER_03: We are energized by his spirit, and so he can say in verse 5, these words with shocking clarity, apart from me, you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_03: Do you believe that?
SPEAKER_03: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Where does fruitfulness come from?
SPEAKER_03: It comes from being connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_03: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Told you that was a short one.
SPEAKER_02: Second.
SPEAKER_02: How do we bear fruit?
SPEAKER_03: What does bearing fruit look like?
SPEAKER_03: How does it come about?
SPEAKER_03: It is not just the case that there are two people here.
SPEAKER_03: There's Jesus as the vine, and there's us as the branches.
SPEAKER_03: There's another, there's another actor, there's another character, another participant in this dynamic.
SPEAKER_03: Did you spot it?
SPEAKER_03: Did you see who it was?
SPEAKER_03: Verse 1, I am the vine, and my father is the vine dresser.
SPEAKER_03: That is, he's the he's the gardener, the one who is given to the dividi culture of making sure the vine is fruitful.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 2, have a look at it with me.
SPEAKER_03: Uh John chapter 15, if you have forgotten.
SPEAKER_03: Verse 2, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it might bear more fruit.
SPEAKER_03: Now, some of you sitting here might immediately read the start of verse 2 and sort of panic and think, does this mean that God will cut away some Christians?
SPEAKER_03: And they won't last.
SPEAKER_03: Am I someone who's God's cutting off?
SPEAKER_03: Am I a Christian who God will eventually cut away and burn?
SPEAKER_03: Can I just say, without tumbling deep into the weeds of this, that such a reading would be completely against so much of what we have already read in John's gospel?
SPEAKER_03: I point you again to John chapter 6, verse 37.
SPEAKER_03: Very clear words of assurance.
SPEAKER_03: All that the Father has given me will come to me.
SPEAKER_03: And all those who come to me, I will never drive away.
SPEAKER_03: I will never drive away.
SPEAKER_03: This uh incidentally, my wife is on City Kids, and she said, uh, if you if you want to add lib, don't, because I don't.
SPEAKER_03: But I this one's helpful.
SPEAKER_03: Um between us, don't tell her.
SPEAKER_03: Stuck to the script whole time.
SPEAKER_03: When you're reading your Bible, there are going to be things that are clear and things that are unclear.
SPEAKER_03: Verse verse 2, the start of verse 2 is in the kind of slightly less clear category.
SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay, well, what's going on there?
SPEAKER_03: Well, one of the principles for you when you read your Bible is you take that which is clear, like John 6, 37, and you allow it to uh to interpret the unclear parts.
SPEAKER_03: And so you kind of sit there reading John chapter 15, verse 2, and you kind of think, well, whatever the start of verse 2 means, it can't mean the opposite of chapter 6, verse 37.
SPEAKER_03: Because you cannot interpret one part of the Bible to use the old language such that it be repugnant to another.
SPEAKER_03: That is, so that it directly contradicts another.
SPEAKER_03: Do you see?
SPEAKER_03: So you take the clear stuff and help it and it helps you to understand the slightly less clear stuff.
SPEAKER_03: Now, what is going on here?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I think it's helpful to remember the example of Judas.
SPEAKER_03: Because Judas, in some sense, was connected to, associated with.
SPEAKER_03: With the vine and yet showed no fruit.
SPEAKER_03: And so he revealed in his going out at the end of chapter 13 that he was never really connected to the life-giving vine at all.
SPEAKER_03: Well, that means for us, and there is a warning here for us, but what that means is that it's possible to claim allegiance to Jesus, to come to church, to raise hands in worship, and yet have no life of the vine in you.
SPEAKER_03: How do you know that there is life of the vine in you?
SPEAKER_02: It will show itself in fruit.
SPEAKER_02: What happens to the fruitful Christian in verse 2?
SPEAKER_03: They are pruned.
SPEAKER_03: They are pruned by our good Father.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus takes us here to a painful place.
SPEAKER_03: But we know it to be true in our world.
SPEAKER_03: Every tree, every rose, every plant needs to go through a season of deadheading, of cutting back, of pruning, in order that it might in the subsequent season flourish even more.
SPEAKER_03: In the same way, the Father comes to your life and prunes you that you might bear more fruit.
SPEAKER_03: That is, if you are a believer following Jesus, you will experience the painful pruning of the Father in your life.
SPEAKER_03: You think, oh, I became I became a Christian and everything got harder.
SPEAKER_03: It's not the way it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_03: Actually, yes, it is.
SPEAKER_03: The first 60 years are the hardest.
SPEAKER_03: It gets easier after that.
SPEAKER_03: Do not sit here, particularly if you're looking into what it means to being a Christian and think that by becoming a follower of Jesus, that your life will suddenly become easy.
SPEAKER_03: Some of you are sitting here this morning and you are going through stuff that is tempting you to think, is God is God cutting me off?
SPEAKER_03: Why is God doing this?
SPEAKER_03: I had plans for my life.
SPEAKER_03: I had plans for this year.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's the gracious pruning of the Father that in another season of your life you might bear more fruit.
SPEAKER_03: And perhaps even you're beginning to see the first buds of that fruitfulness now.
SPEAKER_02: You know, as you pray for more patience.
SPEAKER_03: How does God cultivate patience in your life?
SPEAKER_03: Well, he puts you in seasons and circumstances and puts people in your life that try your patience.
SPEAKER_03: How does God create more faith?
SPEAKER_03: Well, he puts you in seasons of your life that are going to deepen and test and stretch your faith.
SPEAKER_03: The tree shakes so that the roots go deeper.
SPEAKER_03: The father prunes so that you might bear more fruit.
SPEAKER_03: And so when you suffer and face trial, remember, believer, that you are under the pruning hand of God.
SPEAKER_03: And so there is purposefulness in this season.
SPEAKER_03: It is to increase your fruit.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus knows that these are hard words, and so goes immediately to comfort his disciples in verse 3, where he says, Already you are made clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.
SPEAKER_03: Clean and prune are the same word in Greek.
SPEAKER_03: Slightly different endings, but it's a play on words.
SPEAKER_03: Already the Father comes to clean you, like deadheading, pruning, that sort of thing, and I have cleaned you.
SPEAKER_03: How is this an assurance?
SPEAKER_03: Well, remember back to the feet washing that we had a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus assures Peter that he's already clean and only needed to have his feet washed.
SPEAKER_03: And so Jesus, in a sense, returns to the same sort of idea, sort of idea.
SPEAKER_03: He's saying, Your eternal secure your eternal security as part of the vine is not in question here when God comes with the pruning shears.
SPEAKER_03: It's not in jeopardy.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, the the dead twigs of sin and the choking vines of shame have already been cleaned away from the believer.
SPEAKER_03: And so the father comes not with axe to hew you down, but with pruning shears to increase your fruit.
SPEAKER_03: That is the first way that you bear fruit.
SPEAKER_03: The second way that you bear fruit is this idea of abiding, abiding in the vine.
SPEAKER_03: The word abide comes up lots.
SPEAKER_03: Really, in the next six verses, it comes up ten times.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is using this idea of uh of remaining in him, resting in him, relying upon him.
SPEAKER_03: You know, this if we are the branches and he is the vine, you know, I said uh in in point one about this kind of subsidiarity.
SPEAKER_03: Well, one of the one of the things that it means to buy it is that there's there's a dependence.
SPEAKER_03: That's hard for us because we often don't want to be helped and we want to be independent.
SPEAKER_03: But one of the ways that we will bear more fruit in our lives is by an acknowledgement of our dependence upon the vine and pressing into that, leaning on that.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus uh unpacks this further for us in a couple of directions.
SPEAKER_03: He says that that abiding in him means having his words abide in us.
SPEAKER_03: That's uh that's verse seven.
SPEAKER_03: If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
SPEAKER_03: So one of the ways that we abide in Jesus is that we allow Jesus' words to abide in us.
SPEAKER_03: He's already uh set up this sort of idea of uh of the word remaining in us, and then he and his father coming and making a home in us.
SPEAKER_03: That was the passage that we looked at last week, and now again he's saying, let's have let my word abide in you.
SPEAKER_03: Psalm one uh is a psalm which basically opens up the whole book of Psalms and it gives an image of a tree.
SPEAKER_03: It says that the godly person is like a tree who is planted by streams of water, whose leaf does not wither.
SPEAKER_03: And then it says that day and night he meditates on the law of the Lord, or she meditates on the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: So to be planted as a tree strong and firm is to be rooted in God's word.
SPEAKER_03: Now, this is much more than uh than mere Bible reading, this is Bible marinating.
SPEAKER_03: This is allowing uh all of the scriptures, all of God's voice to be in your ears and in your heart.
SPEAKER_03: We allow so many voices to speak to us every day without even thinking about it.
SPEAKER_03: Voices that speak words of comparison and inadequacy, voices that speak words of uh of self-loathing, voices that speak words of uh of negativity.
SPEAKER_03: What would it be like if actually the voice that raised above those voices in your life was voice speaking truth about who you are, but who God has made you to be and what he has done for you and his great rescue of you.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, we are great sinners, but we have a great savior.
SPEAKER_03: What would it be to turn up the volume on God's word to you, to hear his voice, and to allow that to seep into your heart?
SPEAKER_03: Because you know that those negative words, well, they they do damage internally, don't they?
SPEAKER_02: They tear you down.
SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't it be the case that his word might create something new in you?
SPEAKER_03: That as you abide in his word, you might bear fruit that will last.
SPEAKER_03: And planting ourselves in Jesus' words means that more and more we begin to align with Jesus' priorities.
SPEAKER_03: This uh, not to disappoint is what verse 7b means, where he says, Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
SPEAKER_03: That is not that you can have whatever you want.
SPEAKER_03: Uh we don't believe Christians aren't some sort aren't witches.
SPEAKER_03: We don't believe in incantations, right?
SPEAKER_03: Uh and it's not just well, uh, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna read the Bible and then I'll I'll ask whatever I want and God will give it.
SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna name it from the universe, and then the universe will send it to me.
SPEAKER_03: That's not what Jesus is saying here.
SPEAKER_03: No, he's saying that the more that you marinade in my word and have my word take root in your heart and permeate your very being, well, all the more will your prayers begin to align with my priorities.
SPEAKER_03: That actually you'll begin to pray different things.
SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're actually just praying for uh for for a nice car because your other one is broken down.
SPEAKER_03: Well, you know, my my uh my four fias is broken down, so I'd really love a Lambo, uh, and uh and I'm letting your word uh marinate in my heart.
SPEAKER_03: And so whatever I want, Lord, uh you'll grant it.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_03: It's actually that's actually a very selfish prayer, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03: It's as Jesus' words take root in you, you begin to pray differently.
SPEAKER_03: You begin to have different priorities, and so you begin to pray in line with what Jesus uh Jesus wants for you and for the world.
SPEAKER_03: And what that means is that more and more and more in your life you will see prayers answered because you'll be praying with the grain of Jesus' heart.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus longs to answer prayers that he has already said that he will pray or that he will answer.
SPEAKER_03: So pray in line with his heart as you marinate in his word.
SPEAKER_03: You cannot expect fruitfulness in your life without fostering a deeper commitment to his word.
SPEAKER_03: Some of you uh are doing uh scripture reading groups and things like that.
SPEAKER_03: I've noticed that in group chats and things like that.
SPEAKER_03: That might be something that you want to do.
SPEAKER_03: You might want to take a, I mean, I know it's it's coming up on the end of February, but you haven't uh run out of too much time in terms of a daily Bible reading plan, you might say, to some people after church.
SPEAKER_03: You might message in a group and say, why don't we all be be sitting and marinating in God's word together and encourage one another so that he might bear more fruit in our lives?
SPEAKER_03: That might be something that you uh the conversation that you have after the service.
SPEAKER_02: But abiding for Jesus also means this.
SPEAKER_03: It also means abiding in his love.
SPEAKER_03: And what does that look like?
SPEAKER_03: Well, he tells us in verse 10 if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.
SPEAKER_02: This is what we saw last week as well.
SPEAKER_03: To love Jesus is not just a feeling, it's not just warm fuzzies, it's a love that translates into action, into listening to what he says and following him in it.
SPEAKER_03: To say that we love Jesus without actually listening to him and without following him reveals that we do not love him at all.
SPEAKER_03: The believer who seeks to abide in the love of Jesus must listen to Jesus' commands.
SPEAKER_03: And what is it that Jesus commands us?
SPEAKER_03: What is it that he wants from us that we might bear fruit?
SPEAKER_03: Well, he tells us.
SPEAKER_03: It is not some great Herculean task, it is not some unachievable action.
SPEAKER_03: It is this, verse 12 This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved ye.
SPEAKER_03: And then he gives the example of that love in verse 13, in this somewhat famous verse, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down a life, his life for his friends.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus is showing his example of love and how we are to love others.
SPEAKER_03: His love was perfect and unending, his love drove him to the cross.
SPEAKER_03: He is not asking us to die on some other Good Friday.
SPEAKER_03: Yet he is saying, because you died in me on Good Friday, you can now live a selfless, relationally generous, gracious life towards others.
SPEAKER_03: To embody a love that forgives, a love that hates sin and injustice, a love that lovingly calls others away from sin and foolishness and points them again to the love of Jesus, his forgiveness and his grace.
SPEAKER_03: We bear fruit when we listen to Jesus, we bear fruit when we allow his word to saturate us.
SPEAKER_03: We bear fruit when we love as he loved.
SPEAKER_03: And again, he gives us an assurance, he gives us a comfort.
SPEAKER_03: He comes to us and he says, You're not my servants, you're not my slaves.
SPEAKER_03: You're my friends.
SPEAKER_03: Believer, you are a friend of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: He does not command servants to love him, he bids friends to love him.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus has opened his heart to you.
SPEAKER_03: He has shown you the Father, that is what is he telling the disciples.
SPEAKER_03: He's shown you his desire for your life and what he is doing.
SPEAKER_03: He's let you in on the inside.
SPEAKER_02: You are his friend.
SPEAKER_02: And what is the goal of this fruit bearing?
SPEAKER_03: That second point was the longer one.
SPEAKER_03: The next ones are shorter.
SPEAKER_03: What's the goal of fruit bearing?
SPEAKER_03: Well, there are two goals, actually.
SPEAKER_03: The first one is glory.
SPEAKER_03: Glory to the Father, verse 8.
SPEAKER_03: By this the Father is glorified, that you may bear much fruit and prove to be my disciples.
SPEAKER_03: And connected with it is verse 11.
SPEAKER_03: This is the second goal.
SPEAKER_03: These things I have spoken to you that you may have joy.
SPEAKER_03: Sorry, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
SPEAKER_03: What's the goal of fruit bearing?
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's glory and it's joy.
SPEAKER_03: These two things are not opposed.
SPEAKER_03: Adam and Eve made this mistake of thinking that they were opposed, that if they lived under the rule of another, giving glory to him, that they couldn't possibly have joy, that joy only comes in the absence of any sort of constraint.
SPEAKER_03: Now joy comes when we are free to live as we were made to live.
SPEAKER_03: You were made to be connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_03: Well, we're back in chapter 10 in some senses, aren't we?
SPEAKER_03: Come to give them life and life in all its fullness.
SPEAKER_03: Here he says, I have come to give you joy, and that your joy might be full.
SPEAKER_03: Joy in every station of life, joy through every circumstance, joy, even when the Father's pruning hand is at work in your life, because you know you abide eternally in the vine, you know that more fruit is coming, and that you will always be his.
SPEAKER_02: What does it look like for City Church to bear fruit?
SPEAKER_03: Let's just conclude, not by thinking about us individually, but by thinking about us all as a church family.
SPEAKER_03: What does fruitfulness look like for us?
SPEAKER_03: Well, let me tell you what it does not look like.
SPEAKER_03: Fruitfulness for City Church does not look like increased attendance on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_03: As exciting as it is, and I am glad that you were all here.
SPEAKER_02: But it's a beguiling, uh it's a it's a false metric.
SPEAKER_03: That's not fruitfulness, nor is it found in more and more decisions for Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Now, what is fruitfulness for us as a church?
SPEAKER_03: Let me give you a couple of ideas that I'm thinking through of where I think fruitfulness needs to go as we move in to this next season of our life together.
SPEAKER_03: I think fruitfulness looks like an ever-increasing desire amongst us to see Jesus magnified.
SPEAKER_03: That is, to know him and to make him known.
SPEAKER_03: That if there is a lessening of our own self-centeredness, if our worship and what we do here in a Sunday morning has at its core an outward and an upward look rather than an inward one.
SPEAKER_03: That as we increase in our desire to know Jesus and to make him known, I think that's what will uh make us more fruitful.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's what fruitfulness will look like.
SPEAKER_03: That if that heart orientation takes root in more and more of us and is part of our culture, I think that's fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_02: I think also that fruitfulness would look like increased increased repentance among us.
SPEAKER_03: That's not to say that uh there are uh there are more and more things that we need to repent of, but one of the things that that happens as people become more spiritually mature is you become more and more aware of your need of Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: You become more aware of uh how how short you fall and how how much his grace uh needs to extend to you.
SPEAKER_03: That's not a sign of spiritual immaturity, that's a sign of spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_03: And so I think that fruitfulness amongst us would be a culture where we increasingly acknowledge our need of the vine, where we come willingly to one another to seek forgiveness, where we bow the knee willingly in private and before those with whom we are close and say, I need Jesus to forgive me in this area of my life.
SPEAKER_03: I need to repent of this.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's what fruitfulness would look like.
SPEAKER_03: I think fruitfulness would look like an ever increasing devotion to the word of God and a hunger to learn.
SPEAKER_02: Can I give you a warning this morning?
SPEAKER_02: Be careful of the attitude that comes to God's word and says, I know that already.
SPEAKER_02: I've got nothing to learn there.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't hear anything new.
SPEAKER_03: If God is infinite, and he is, that means that there are that means that he is infinitely interesting.
SPEAKER_03: That means that there are infinite joys to be hewn out from his depths.
SPEAKER_03: Be careful of the heart attitude that comes and goes, well, I know that already.
SPEAKER_03: No, I think fruitfulness means an ever-increasing hunger.
SPEAKER_03: A restlessness, not to be content with quote unquote a simple faith.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I'm not saying that you should just all become cerebral.
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying, and I'm sure, I at least I hope, that you're not coming away thinking that I'm encouraging you all to become brains on sticks.
SPEAKER_03: But to come away from this and have no desire to dive deeper, no desire to learn more, to be astounded by him.
SPEAKER_02: That's a concern.
SPEAKER_03: And so conversely, I think that fruitfulness means an increased hunger and desire for those things amongst us.
SPEAKER_03: And finally, I think that we will increase in fruitfulness, or I think that fruitfulness, rather, I should say, fruitfulness will be made evident as our love for our neighbor increases.
SPEAKER_03: I don't just mean the people who live next door to you, that that may be true.
SPEAKER_03: No, to have a heart that is soft, that is relationally open, that is generous, that is given to service, that uh that wants to seek to bless, to ask to know, to find out how people are doing and what it is that they need, how they can be prayed for, how it is that we might seek the good of others, seek the good of our city, seek the good of those in the spheres where God has placed us.
SPEAKER_03: I think that we will be a church that shows more fruit when it is evidenced in increased love for our neighbor.
SPEAKER_02: That's my prayer for us.
SPEAKER_03: I have nothing else to say.
SPEAKER_02: Philippo will be delighted.
SPEAKER_02: The increased attendance is wonderful, and I thank God for it.
SPEAKER_02: But we don't just want more people.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus desires more fruit amongst us.
SPEAKER_03: Let's pray that we might abide in the vine and bear fruit that will last.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found in Dublin below.