Nathan Walker- Genuine Faith

Nathan kicks off our new series with a message out of John 15.  He speaks to the need of having a faith that produces fruit. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Alright, can you hear me? Cool. Alright, I know she cried. Okay. No sympathy votes. All right. She's a tired mom, I'm a tired dad. Okay? We'll agree there. All right. Well, the secrets out. I was gonna say that if you hadn't been able to tell yet, I'm not Pastor Aaron. That is not in fact. I mean, I was gonna make a couple jokes, but I won't. So, no, I'm excited to be here today. If you don't know me, my name's Nathan. This is the second time I've been able to come up here and speak, and so it's a blessing, and I, you know, thankful for the opportunity. So before I get started here, who has one of these with them? If you got it, put it in here. If you got a phone, that's like a half point. And 50% is failing. So just saying. All right. So we kind of have a long passage to start here, and our opening passage will not be on the screen. So I would open up to that as John 15. We're gonna be in verses 1 through 17. If you don't want to listen to me read the whole thing, please read along because I'm not that exciting. So I hear Paige is turning, so hold up. All right. So this starts with I am the true vine, and my father is a gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes, and he prunes every branch and fruit so that it produce more fruit. You are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I knew, just as the branch is unable to bruise fruit by itself, unless it remains on the vine, neither can you, unless you remain in me. I and the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I and him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burnt. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. My father is glorified by this, that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. Just as I kept my father's commands and remained in his love, I have told you these things that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my command. Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, but to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit, and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask in the Father, in my name, he will give you. This is my command. Love one another. All right. Long patchage, thank you for bearing with me there. But it it's all kind of relevant to what we're gonna be going over. Do we got any like people that enjoy history here? Kind of yeah? Okay, cool, awesome. So a lot of times when I look for like illustrations, I like going back into history, things like that. It resonates with me, things like that. So in the spring of 1849, a 24-year-old farmer from Ohio, who we're gonna call the young buckeye, joined the gold rush. He sold all of his belongings and left his family crossing the plains on a wagon train, arriving broke but hopeful at the American River near Sutter's Mirror in Coloma, California. Once he got there, he panned from dawn till dusk for weeks, knee deep in icy water, scooping gravel with a tin pan, hoping to see gold. One afternoon, the pan flashed with bright brassy yellow flakes and small nuggets that caught the sunlight like gold. They were heavy, metallic, and plentiful, dozens of them in a single pan. He let out a yell that echoed down the river. His campmates rushed over, they slapped his back, they passed around a flask, they were cheering that he had finally done it. Word spent around quickly, so he he staked his claim on the portion of the river, and he worked it day and night. And by week's end, he had a leather pouch, heavy with what was certain to be a small fortune. At that point, he rode triumphantly into Sacramento City with his prize, where he found the essay office. If you don't know what the essay office is, it's someone that verifies precious metals. The essay office was a rough wooden shack, but the miner behind the counter was experienced, and so he took a pinch of his gold and he weighed it. Then he did two quick tests. First, he pressed it with a knife. Real gold would dent and smear this state hard. Then he struck it sharply with steel. Real gold is silent. This sparked like flint. The sayer signed and hand back the pat the pouch, and he said the words that crush dreams all over California. Son, that's pyrite. It's fool's gold. It's just iron and sulfur, pretty as a real thing, but worthless. Real gold bends and it doesn't spark, it leaves yellow streak. You've got yourself a fine collection of rocks. The young Buckeye stood stunned in a dusty street. Months of hardship, working harder than he had ever worked in his life. He took time away from his family. He used every penny that he owned. He staked his entire reputation, and all he had to show for it was a bag of worthless shiny rocks. This was a story of so many who sought to capitalize on a gold rush in the late 1800s. And while our young Buckeye thought he had struck it rich with gold, all he had were fraudulent stones that weren't genuine. So my question to you is how do I know if my faith is genuine? Or if it's fraudulent? I'm going to emphasize the word genuine here because this is the first week of our new series called Genuine, this week in being entitled Genuine Faith. Over the next six weeks, we're going to explore the evidence of a Christ-like faith, revealing what life marked by genuine faith looks like and what it truly means to be Christ-like. This is an important series we're about to begin, and I thank God, Pastor Aaron, and Pastor Kelly for allowing me to open the series. This subject that we're going to talk about is something that's dear to my heart. As growing up a Christian, the words of Matthew 7, 21 through 23 have haunted my heart. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven on that day will say to me, will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive demons out in your name? And didn't we not do many miracles in your name? Then I will announce to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers. We need to know what these verses mean for me and what they mean for all of you. Because if we're honest with ourselves, I don't think we recognize the danger of what surrounds us. We live in a place where most of us make just enough money. We think we can do it without Christ. And we live in a place where it makes it easy to be a cultural Christian. One that professes Jesus with her lips, but has a heart unchanged and lives a slightly morally improved life. I want to achieve a couple things this morning. Number one, I want to encourage those with genuine faith. And then number two, I want to confront those who profess Jesus with their lips, but have a heart unchanged towards God. Let's pray. Just help us understand. Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So as we went through John 15, 1 through 17, it's kind of a long verse. Something that's really cool about this passage is Jesus is using this imagery, the vine and the branches, and he's using it to tie the Old Testament and the New Testament together. And he does it in a really beautiful way. And so what we're reading from today is the fourth section of Jesus' farewell discourse before his death. And he's offering encouraging messages and assurance to his disciples. And he uses the vine and the branches for imagery. And that probably doesn't mean a whole lot to us, but it meant a lot to the ancient Jewish readers at the time. The vine was a specific metaphor used to reference the nation of Israel, the people of God, the chosen people. Except when God referenced Israel as a vine, it wasn't good. To give you an example, Isaiah 4 or Isaiah 5, 4 through 7 says, What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did? Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes, did it yield worthless grapes? Now I will tell you, I'm about to do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and will be consumed. I will tear down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, and it will not be pruned or weaned. Thorns and briars will grow up, and I will give order to the clouds that the rain should not fall on it. For the vineyard will grow up. For the vineyard of the Lord of the armies, the house of Israel, and men of Judah, the plant that he delighted in, expected justice, but saw injustice, and he expected righteousness, but he heard cries of despair. Essentially, this time and every other time you see God use this imagery in the Old Testament. It's God pronouncing judgment over Israel, calling the vine fruitless, worthless, and only good to be burned. The metaphor fruit here is referring to actions. It's the things that we do, whether they be righteous or unrighteous. There's this good fruit that is righteous living, and then there is bad fruit that is unrighteous living, or sometimes no fruit at all. So what you have here is Jesus in John 15, he's declaring that he is the Messiah by saying that he is the true vine, or in other words, the restored Israel. And while the old vine, being the nation of Israel and the law of Moses, it was incapable of producing good fruit off of its branches. Jesus is saying he has come to do what the nation of Israel, the people of God and us, have been incapable to do in our entire existence. And that's produce pleasing fruit to God. Where we fail and continue to fail, Christ succeeded. This is actually a very encouraging text, but there's kind of a lot to dissect and dive into. But this is what Jesus was teaching in the context of his disciples. So we we've talked a lot about fruit so far, and you'll notice Jesus uses the word fruit a bunch. In the first eight verses, he uses fruit six times. It's notable. So that begs a couple questions. What is fruit and why is it important? To answer the latter question first, we're gonna go back to verse two of our prayer uh of our passage. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes. He prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. Jesus is saying something very clear here, and I don't want to brush over it. And when I say what I'm about to say, I don't want to come off as harsh, but if I do, I'm not sorry. Just hang with me. To be Christian is to bear fruit. And look, I'm not a judge of anyone's faith, but according to the text, if there is no fruit, there is no faith. Verse 2 says, if the branches that don't produce fruit cut off. And so don't get mad at me. All right. If you send me an angry text message, I'm foreign it straight to the apostle John and Jesus. All right, it's not you can talk to them. Get mad of the text. But no, this is important because something we're gonna talk about later is that you can know that you know that your faith is genuine and have confidence in that that should create a boldness for Christ. What I don't want to do is encourage those that shouldn't be encouraged in that regard. And I mean that in love because everyone is here for a reason. Jesus is knocking on the door. So that makes the earlier question very important is what is the fruit that Jesus is talking about? In Galatians 5, 22 through 23, the apostle Paul is going to elaborate a little further into this. And it says, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There's no law against such things. I want to point out something really interesting about this verse, something that when I was doing my study, I think I missed in my any any time I've read this verse. If you look at the word fruit here in this verse, it is in singular form. It's not plural. Paul lists nine different manifestations of the fruit of the spirit here, and while that's a lot, the word fruit is in singular form. So then how do you summarize this one fruit? It's with one word, love. Jesus says in verse 16 and 17 over our passage in John today, you did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go produce fruit, that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask in the Father, in my name, he will give you, this is what I command, love one another. So in our passage, we don't see Jesus elaborate a ton in the fruit. He brings up fruit over and over and over again. But you notice he doesn't tell us directly what that fruit is, but he gets to the end and he says, I have the one command I have for you is to love one another. Love is the supreme fruit of the spirit. All other manifestations that Paul is mentioning, like joy, kindness, self-control, so on, those are manifestations of love and operation. First Corinthians 13, 4 through 7 says, Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy, is not boastful, it is not arrogant, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not irritable, and it does not keep record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Paul lists all the things that perfect love are in this verse. But it if you pay attention, all Paul did was give an in-depth commentary of what he taught in Galatians five, listing how each of these things are expressions of love. Earlier in chapter 13, first Corinthians, Paul says this if I speak in human or angelic tongues, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clinging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all the mysteries and all the knowledge, but and I have faith that I can move in mountains, but do not love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to the poor, and if I give my body over to boast, but I do not have love, I gain nothing. Paul then goes on to teach in Romans 13, 9 through ten the commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and any other commandment are summed up by this one commandment, love one another as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. I want to repeat that that love is the fulfillment of the law. And as Christians, these things, these are the things that our lives should be marked by. In John 13, 35 through 36, Jesus says, I give you a new command, love one another, just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you love one another, I appeal to you once more, Christian. Are these the virtues that mark your life? Are you holding gold in your hands? Or do you just have some shiny rocks? So that brings us on to how this fruit is produced. We kind of touched on this, and some of these verses are hard, and especially confronting it this way. And they make us think. And often the ones with genuine faith are the ones that wrestle the most with their assurance and salvation. And if that's you, I want to encourage you. What you're feeling in most cases is evidence of faith. I'd be more concerned if you told me you had never wrestled with the assurance of your salvation. Which speaking of evidence moves me on how fruit is produced in our lives. You know, after everything we we've read so far and we we've heard from the from Jesus and the Apostle Paul, I don't know, my mind would go to the things that I've done, the things that I could do better, the things that I wish I I could go back and do, or the things that are the changes I'm gonna make. That you know what? Maybe you're out there and you examined your life, and these aren't the things that are marking your life. If that's you, the last thing I want you to do is go and try harder. Actually, I emphasize do not try to bear fruit. Do not give it another go. That is not what the text is saying, or God's heart towards you. Genuine fruit is not produced by discipline. Your effort is futile to do so. So, what's our hope then? Well, fortunately, Jesus will tell us. In verse 3 of our passage, it says, You are already clean because the words I have spoken to you. And when you read it and you kind of it's easy to miss, it's easy to get over. But when you actually think about it, this is a mind-boggling verse, and it's so important. Jesus tells tells his disciples here that because their faith in him, and in the words that he has spoken, and their faith in him, that they are clean. The NLT version of this says, in a way, I like a little better, you have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. The disciples were pruned and purified by the message they were given and the faith in the messenger that is the Messiah, Jesus Christ. Even crazier, if you place, you zoom out a little bit and you place where Jesus teaching his disciples here, we are less than 24 hours from Peter emphatically denying Christ three times publicly. That right there should show you God's heart towards you. This takes us to what we were talking about in the very beginning of the sermon. Jesus declared, I am the vine, I am the restored Israel, I am here to do what you cannot. Moving on to verse 4 in our passage, it says, Remain in me and I in you, just as the branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. So, two very important things about this verse. Number one, Christ makes it clear we cannot produce fruit apart from the vine. All the fruit and love that we've been talking about cannot be produced by our own effort. It can only be produced by Christ in us. And I'm trying to be so clear about this. If you white knuckle your behavior to produce results, you are not serving God, you are serving yourself in man-made religion. Because if you do, because if you do that, if you do that, you're telling God, I got it, I don't need you. And you do, because you will fail. The second thing that's important to take from that verse is Christ says to remain in him. The New King James Version uses a term I like a little better. It says abide in him. Christ is speaking here where our position should be in relation to him in this verse. Six times in the first ten verses, Jesus is going to emphasize that we abide, that we abide in him, and he abide in us. What Jesus is saying here over and over again is the only way to bear fruit is to be in his presence, to pursue him, to seek him. God does not want your morality, God doesn't want your behavior, he just wants your heart. He doesn't want you for what you can do for him, he doesn't need you. He wants you because he created for you, or because he created you, he died for you just so he could have a personal relationship with you. God promises to take you as you are right now, but through his love and grace, he's not going to leave you there. He doesn't want your slightly improved morals. Once God has you and you abide in him, he isn't going to grow you in those areas that Paul talks about in Galatians, such as peace, joy, self control, kindness, and all the different expressions of love. God does this through God does this through a process that in our passage he's going to refer to as pruning. According to the to the word. The branches on the vine that are fruitless are cut off, and the branches that do produce fruit are cut back, which seems counterintuitive. Which I guess, unless you know anything about gardening, which I don't, so I won't go into that. But the text tells us that he's going to prune our fruit in order to grow more. And to get a glimpse of what that's going to look like in your life, it's going to happen in a few ways. The more time that you lean into God, that you seek God, he's going to do one of these three things. Number one, he's going to convict you of your sin. God is going to slowly and methodically work away at your sin through conviction. You're going to be going throughout your day or reading his word. And sometimes out of nowhere, God is going to be like, it's time for this thing to go. But through conviction of sin, God will call you into a deeper relationship with him and you'll produce more fruit because of it. The next one I'm going to talk about is maybe a little more confusing because obviously sin is bad. So it makes sense that God would convict us of this. But the next thing is God will sometimes convict you of something that isn't sin. God may convict you or convict your heart of something that could be anything, but may not inherently be sinful. God may call you out of things that aren't wrong, but in his wisdom he knows it's not good or healthy for you. It could also be possible that it is setting you apart. 1 Corinthians 6 12 says, Everything is permissible. Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. And then the last way is it probably the most difficult way. It's the least fun way. And it's trials, tribulations, and hard times. Even hard times that we create ourselves. God's going to use these difficult times of our lives for his glory. If you've been a soul to gospel that we are in for a happy, clappy Christian life, I got a reality check for you this morning. That's not the case. Jesus, if you just do a little study of Jesus and how many times he says it's not going to be fun. But the good thing is, Jesus is going to take what was meant for evil. He was going to take our failures. He's going to take the difficult seasons and use them for his glory to grow us in those times. And it's not, we're not going to want to do those things ever again. I can think of a couple times in my life where I've explained, where I've experienced this. And I'm not begging for more. One of the most times that I wish I could honestly get out of my head. My son, he was born with an extra thumb on his right hand. Like I said, I hate this story, so bear with me, guys. He was born with an extra thumb on his right hand, and at about a year old, he went in for a surgery to have it removed. Should have been a simple surgery. Ten minutes. The love that I felt for my son. And how desperate I was for him to be okay. And as awful as that wasn't that time, as I'm sitting there in a hospital, and I I really didn't want to hear it at the time. I really didn't want to. I I could feel uh God in the back of my mind telling me, if you want to know how much I love my people, it's as much. And so and my son's okay, so don't get too sad. You'll you'll see him running around after a service. He'll he'll probably be an inconvenience to you, but that's okay. But no, you know, God is gonna use what are what feels like the most awful moments of your life, he's gonna use those to grow you, and you'll produce more fruit because of it. Uh I'm gonna start kind of drawing this to a conclusion because I promised towards the beginning of this that I could say you could know that you would know. And we started with an illustration of a man who thought he had found gold, but really only had worthless rocks. And a question is your faith genuine or fool's gold? Above all else, I want to make this perfectly clear. If you've never heard the term soul of fidae, it's Latin for faith alone. Your salvation through Christ is through faith alone. Jesus told his disciples that they were made clean by their faith in him, that all that is required by salvation to have faith is by the finished work of Jesus Christ. God doesn't want your behavior, he only wants your heart, he has not condemned you. In fact, when you put your faith in him, he no longer sees your sin. Only Jesus' sacrifice. Just to blow your mind, just maybe a little further, when I say God no longer sees your sin, God no longer I'm talking about your past sin, your present sin, and your future sin. When Jesus said it was finished, he meant it. Jesus knew that even after you put your faith in him, you were gonna betray him again and again. And guess what? He died for you anyway. That's how much he loves you. But there's power in salvation, and we cannot help but be changed by Jesus Christ in us. In other words, while we are saved by faith, and genuine faith will produce works. In 1 Johns 1, 6 through 10, it says, if we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we are lying, and we are not practicing truth. If we walk in the light, as he sees as he is himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us for our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. And maybe that's you. Maybe through this you evaluated your life and realized there is no evidence. Let me tell you that there's a God that loves you and that died for you and wants nothing else but to have a personal relationship with you. You're not here by accident. God is actively reaching out to you, knocking on the door this morning. Um before we get too much further, you see we have a baptism. If you're getting baptized, please head towards the back now. There will be people meeting there for you. But here's how I want to proceed. Um Kalton is going to lead us into a final song of worship here. And if you've never been to our church before, the altars are always open. And so here's what I want to do. Number one, if you've never accepted Jesus in your life at all, if you never accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior but want to, we would love you to come forward so we can pray and celebrate with you on that. Uh number two, maybe fighting a battle in your own strength and trying to be good enough for God, and frankly, you're tired. Uh, God wants that. God will be your victory. And so if that's you, I encourage you to come forward. And last but not least, if you've claimed Christ with your lips, but have not really surrendered your life to him, I beg you to please come forward and lay it at the foot of the cross. Even more exciting, if you want to get baptized this morning, we have extra shirts, we have extra towels. Uh Christ commanded that we be baptized. So if you're nearly saved today, or maybe you've been saved but haven't been baptized yet, and you want to, we'd love to do that with you today. So I'm going to let Kelton take it away here. And then yeah.