To me, nothing feels more like summer than finding a patch of shade at the park after running around and eating a nice, fresh bunch of grapes. But I imagine if we asked our kids, “Where do grapes come from?” they would probably answer, “From the grocery store, of course!”
Few of us see vineyards on a daily basis, and fewer of us have ever walked among the vines, tending to their growth and fruitfulness. But according to Jesus, the work of a vinedresser is exactly like the work of God in our lives as we abide in Christ and his words abide in us.
This week, we will read the famous words of John 15 together and, hopefully, grasp in an even deeper way what it means to abide, be pruned, and bear fruit. So if you eat any grapes before Sunday, take a moment to think about where they came from and how Jesus would have you learn about being at home with God from them.
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: A Journey Home
July 7, 2013
Return Home
John 15:1-8
It’s good to see you guys. Did you have a good Fourth of July? Yeah, pretty good. It was kind of rainy. I brought my pruners this morning. You’ll see why in a minute. Don’t worry. It’s nothing personal. I left them out while we were gone on EPIC. I guess we had a little bit of rain, so they were rusted shut this morning. I got them and pulled them from the bucket where I keep them outside, which is not a good idea. I was spraying them down with the WD-40 and trying to get them loose and everything else. It should be an interesting morning.
You know, like Mike and Buddy were sharing, there has been just so much going on this summer. We just brought the team back from Israel. I’ll share a little bit about that maybe later. We have the guys watching from Kosovo and the team that was there. The reports are that was just the best trip yet. We’ve been going there for four years now, and each year, the Lord just keeps bringing out new and better and cooler things.
The team in Memphis has started the next round of Peace of Thread and Generation Salaam, working among the communities there, similar to what we do in Clarkston. All the students going out every Wednesday night. Camp happening. Bikes. We’re collecting bikes. If you don’t remember that story (the Beltline Bike Project), the donated bikes are for kids who can come in and work.
They can repair bikes and everything else and actually earn a bike for themselves to be able to ride around town. Where they’re going to do it is right at the Midtown Campus in the English Avenue neighborhood. They’re going to do it right there. There it is! Yes, Michael told me he loaded up all those bikes and then was scared to drive on 85. I don’t know why.
You know, what’s happening is as we just recount those stories (and those are just a couple of the highlights)… You can go zoom in on each of our lives, and hopefully God is bringing out cool stuff like that also. What we’re really seeing is just that it’s an abundant and fruitful season around here.
That’s what we’re going to be talking about this morning. We’ve been journeying through our series A Journey Home, the beginning of John 14 through the middle of John 15 as Jesus is teaching his disciples about what it really means to be at home living abundantly with God. We saw the first week Jesus says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust me. In my Father’s house are many rooms, and I’m preparing a room for you.” We saw we have a good home with God.
Then the second week, we were talking about what it means to live in that home with the Father. Who is this Father God with whom we are eternally going to be spending our time? Jesus says, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. I am a perfect reflection of the Father’s nature. Not only do you have a good home, but you have an immeasurably good Dad.”
Then the next week, Brian was preaching and sharing with us about how Jesus promises that not only do we have a good home in the future, not only do we have a good, perfect Dad, but he will not leave us as orphans here on the earth. He will be with us. You can trust your Dad not to leave us. Even though it seems like sometimes he is far away or not working, he is there. He is working.
Then last week, Scott kind of caught us up to speed as the promise continued to get even richer. It’s not just that we have a home, but Jesus says, “My Father and I will come and make our home in you in the form of the Spirit.” The Spirit of God, that Spirit of truth, will guide us into all truth, will lead us. Scott was just talking about what it means to hear from God, respond to God, and walk with his Spirit in us at home.
We just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper into the mystery of what it means to be at home with God. This week, we’re going to see a little bit of a turn because Jesus is talking about as we go deeper and deeper, dwelling with God, at home with God, what begins to emerge is amazing fruit. If you have your Bibles, open them to John, chapter 15. If you need a Bible, slip up your hand.
The notes sheet is just like a blank piece of paper, but if you need one of those, you can get a notes sheet also, or pull out your orange A Journey Home notebooks. How many of you guys like these A Journey Home books? Yeah, a good portion of you. They’re good books. I’ve really enjoyed going through it too.
John, chapter 15. Remember the scene. It’s the night before Jesus is going to the cross. He has been with his disciples. He has washed their feet. He has given them the new command. Judas has left on his way to go betray Jesus. Jesus is walking through the teaching we just recapped there. Then at the end of chapter 14, Jesus says, “Rise. Let’s go from here.”
As we get to chapter 15, the disciples and Jesus are on the move. I mean, we just got back from Jerusalem. Most likely, the Upper Room where Jesus was meeting with the disciples was on sort of Mount Zion, which is the hill sort of next to the Temple Mount. They believe that because… Well, there are a whole bunch of reasons. I don’t have to go all the way into it, but anyway, the idea is that now Jesus…
He is kind of walking from the hilltop of Jerusalem down toward the valley. There at the bottom of the valley, there would have been the garden of Gethsemane where he’ll, of course, have the amazing encounter, the prayer with God where he submits to the Father’s will. Now he is on the move with the disciples. In the ancient world, the city of Jerusalem would have had sort of houses but also sort of gardens and everything intermingled. They were going down the hill, and Jesus began talking about the vine and the branches.
I’m going to read verses 1 through 9, and then we’re going to just unpack them a bit. As we read this, just put yourself in the mindset. Imagine you’re with the disciples. It’s nighttime. It’s probably a little bit cool, a little bit breezy. It’s springtime. You’re walking down the steps. You have sort of the ancient world all around. You have Jesus in front of you.
He starts to talk, and he says, “I am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the Vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” (John 15:1-9)
Ten times Jesus talks about abiding. This is one of his most well known teachings. Many of us have probably read this passage, memorized portions of it, heard teaching on this passage. I remember a couple of years ago when I first got into gardening (my pruners, you know), I had a friend who is a really good gardener. He is in his sixties, and his backyard is like a living forest of vegetables.
I went over to his house. I wanted to ask him some advice about how to start my own garden, because I wanted to go organic and get healthier and all those things you want to do with your life. I went over there, and I was asking him, “How do I garden? What do I need? What soil?” and everything. He just stopped me, and he went, “Stop for a minute.” He quoted me this passage. He said, “Jesus said life with him is like growing, and the Father is like a gardener. The reason to garden is not just to grow organic vegetables.”
I was like, “Oh great! Now my whole spiritual life is encapsulated in the state of my garden.” I got back from Israel, and there’s this rogue cucumber vine that’s taking over everything. We have like 75 pounds of cucumbers and no eggplants. I’m looking at this thing going, “Oh no. I hope this is not a metaphor for my soul right now.” The truth is, until you really start to garden and grow some things in your backyard, it’s hard to connect with this passage.
Jesus is using imagery the disciples would have readily been able to see and know. They had grown up in that sort of agrarian lifestyle. They knew what it was like to grow things. They would have just grasped onto this really quickly. At the core of this passage, what this thing is really all about is growth. How do we grow? How do we bear fruit? How are we transformed in our relationship with God?
That’s an important subject, because I don’t know about you. Sometimes I feel stuck, feel like I’ve kind of been walking, going through the motions, and just doing things. It seems like, for a couple of months, nothing has really happened. I’m wondering, “Okay, am I growing, or am I just stagnant? Am I attached to the Vine? Am I apart from the Vine?”
We’re going to dig into some of these issues. What do we do? How do we understand what it really means to grow with God? We’re going to talk about it this week. We’re going to talk about it some next week. Just as you know sort of the outline, this is what we’re going to talk about. There are three main things.
Carrie got a nice vine here. It’s not a real vine, but it looks pretty real. It’s a good vine. You know, the team here who sets up all the production and does the vines and everything, they do a really good job. I mean, they work hard. They just really enhance. Yeah, let’s just give them a hand because they are fantastic, really, really excellent.
In this passage, Jesus talks about three main things. They’re going to be the three things we talk about. First, he talks about the vine. That’s the portion that’s coming up from the ground. That’s the vine right there. Then he talks about the Vinedresser, who is the Father. The vinedresser is the one who comes and tends to the vine, pruning, making sure it’s growing well.
Then, of course, he talks about the branch, right? The branches come off of the vine itself. We’ll get a little bit more into how growing grapes actually worked in the ancient world, but for now, let’s start with that first thing.
1. The Vine. Jesus is talking about it. He starts off. He says, “I am the True Vine…” (John 15:1) If you’re looking at that vine, the thing you notice immediately is the vine is the only part that is in the ground connected to the source of nutrients, to the soil, to the water. As you look at it, you realize the vine is the source of life. When Jesus is saying, “I am the Vine,” he is saying, “I am the source of life.”
He doesn’t just say, “I’m the Vine,” or, “I’m the only Vine.” He uses a very interesting word. He says, “I am the True Vine…” (John 15:1), which suggests there are potentially many vines we would be tempted to plug into. When Jesus was talking about the vine with these guys (the disciples who had grown up in that Jewish environment, knowing their Old Testament very well), it would have been practically impossible for them to hear that phrase “the vine” without thinking back to the Old Testament references to the vine numerous times.
This is one of the most common ways God uses to describe his relationship to the people of Israel. Psalm, chapter 80, talks about how God brought a vine out of Egypt. Jeremiah, chapter 2, God is saying, “Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?” (Jeremiah 2:21) Isaiah, chapter 5. God is saying, “What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” (Isaiah 5:4)
This picture through the Old Testament is the nation of Israel… This group of people (we walked through this as the One Story the last sort of year or so), they are this idea of the vine. One of the challenges is that in the Old Testament, God, through the prophets, said, “This vine I planted and I expected to bear beautiful fruit is now going wild and yielding skinny, not very good fruit.”
When the disciples and when the Jews heard that phrase “the vine,” they would have taken it very seriously. They would have connected to it. They believed at that time that just because they were part of God’s people (they were among the Jews; they were sort of counted; they were members of the Jewish nation), they’d be all right. They looked at it. They thought, “This membership in the Jewish nation will be our source of life.”
But Jesus here, when he says, “I am the True Vine,” is radically redefining their understanding of where they’re going to draw their life from. Jesus is saying, “No, no, no, no. Life doesn’t just come from being a member of a group or a member of a church. It doesn’t just come from attending a religious gathering, going to the synagogue. It doesn’t just come from keeping all the right rules and not eating this and avoiding that and living everything perfectly. That’s not the source of life. The source of life is me personally, directly.”
He is saying, “The source of life is a personal relationship.” You know, I was going back through Buddy’s notes when he was preaching on John, chapter 15. He was writing about this, and this is from the sermon he preached. You can download these on the Internet. They’re great. Go back a ways. Go to the Grace website. He was talking about how Jesus being the True Vine, what is this True Vine? He just had these series of statements that were so powerful.
It says the True Vine, the source of life, is a person and not a plan. It is life; it’s not a lifestyle. It’s authenticity not appearances. It is grown; it’s not built. It is discovered but not designed. It is cultivated but not controlled. It’s a process but not a point. Jesus is saying, “I am the True Vine.” It raises an important question, I think, for all of us where we’re sitting today.
What is the source of our life? From where do you draw your life? Where are you rooted right now? What are you locked into, drawing life from? In the gospel of John as we read through from the beginning to where we are right now, we meet a number of different people Jesus interacts with. It’s very interesting.
I never thought about this before, but as I was reading through the gospel of John this week and thinking about, “Where are you rooted? Where are you really drawing your life,” I noticed the people Jesus is interacting with draw their life from a variety of sources, not necessarily Jesus. From a variety of different sources. Jesus, in John, chapter 2, comes to the temple. He finds people who are gathered in the temple courtyard neglecting the calling to treat the temple as a place of prayer and rather, instead, changing money.
Here they are in the place of God, but they are more concerned about money. What’s their source of life? What are they rooted into in the temple? Money. Stuff. In John, chapter 4, Jesus meets another woman. She is sitting by Jacob’s well. The Samaritan woman. They begin to have a conversation. During the course of the conversation, it comes to light that this woman has had five husbands, and then the man she is with currently is not her husband.
What’s this woman rooted into? Where is she drawing her life? For her, it’s not so much about stuff. It’s about relationships. She is getting her identity, she is getting her life, from these relationships. As one relationship ends, she has to find another one, because this is where she is trying to draw forth her life.
John, chapter 5, the crippled man at the pool of Bethesda. Jesus walks up to him and says, “What’s going on? Do you want to be healed?” Do you know what the crippled man says? “When the waters are stirred, there is nobody here to come help me out.” What we see in that man is his source of life… He is rooted into his own crisis. That’s kind of miserable if your crisis is your source of life, if your crisis is your vine, but we know this happens.
There are times when it feels like, “Everything around me is going so badly. I have this ailment, and that didn’t work out. This is really rotten.” It goes on and on and on. What you begin to see is this pattern develops where we start to draw our life from the crisis itself. John, chapter 8, he meets a group of people who are questioning him. They say, “Hey, our father is Abraham. We’re drawing our life from the fact that we are born into the right place.” They’re drawing their life from their status.
Judas, even. All the way up to Judas. John, chapter 13. He is a complicated guy to study, Judas, what went wrong there as he betrayed Jesus for the bag of silver. There are all sorts of different theories of exactly what was going on, but here’s ultimately what was going on with Judas. Judas had his own plan. He was drawing life from himself. He was saying, “Hey, I have this. I’m going to figure this out. I know what needs to be done for me.”
As you just tour through the gospel of John and see all these different vines, these different places from which they drew life, it’s almost chilling to recognize how we so often do the same thing. We draw our lives from our stuff. We draw our lives from our relationships. We draw our lives from our crises. We draw our lives from our status. We draw our lives from our confidence in our own plans.
Stuff and relationships in and of themselves are not bad things. They’re not inherently evil, but what happens when they become our vine is they ruin our lives. We end up withering, dying, being thrown away. How do you know if you’re plugged in, if you’re connected, if you’re linked in to the wrong vine? How do you know? Well, imagine that it’s removed. What happens? What happens if you lose all your stuff? What happens if your relationships are taken away? What happens if your crisis goes, your status goes? What happens?
If it feels like you’re dying and withering inside, it might be that you’re relying on that too much for your life, that you’re plugged too deeply into that vine. Jesus says, “I am the True Vine.” He underscores it again and again and again in the passage. He says, “You cannot bear fruit alone. Apart from me, you can do nothing.” Just let the weight of that statement sort of do its work in your soul. Jesus says, “…apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Like a little bit? No. Nothing.
Jesus then says in verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in me…” (John 15:6) Anybody who is linked in to the wrong vine, who is dependent on this or that or whatever, will wither and die. “…the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” (John 15:6) That’s a miserable life. As much as you might want to draw life from any of these other options, the destiny is the same. You wither and die. Jesus is the only source. He is the true source of life.
I remember when I was just starting off at Grace. It was almost 10 years ago now. Several months into working at the church, I had been involved with the college and singles’ ministry. The guy who was leading that had an opportunity to go start a church on the other side of town. He went to do that, and Buddy asked me if I would lead this college and singles’ ministry. I remember thinking, “Ah, yes! This is it. This is going to be awesome.”
I was excited. In my mind, I was thinking in probably six to nine months, we would have thousands of college and singles. We were going to establish Gwinnett as one of the most desirable locations for godly singles and college students to live. “I’m going to probably be about as good as Louie Giglio.” These are all the things that are going on in my mind. You can tell, it’s a healthy way to start a leadership role. You can see what the goal of my leadership was at the time.
The first night they introduced me, it was a Christmas party. There were about 150 students and young adults there. They were excited, and I was excited. “All right. Let’s go after this thing.” What happened over the next year and a half was like a slow cutting away of the wrong vine in me. I was totally plugged into the status, into the success, and everything else. I was not linked into Jesus, and I slowly felt my own soul begin to wither and die.
The ministry itself sort of reflected my heart also. I mean, in a year and a half, we went from like 150 really excited students and young adults at the Christmas party to the following summertime a year later, there were seven of us meeting in Ronald Reagan Park under a pavilion. Nobody wanted to be there. I mean, I know some of you guys who were there are still here now. I see you from time to time. Bless you for sticking around with me, because that was horrible.
I remember sitting there. They were sweating. It’s like July, and I’m like, “Why are we meeting outside? This is awful.” This is what the Lord had to do with me, and it was a hard process. Just through sort of repeated failure and some withering, I had to learn, “Wow. I’m not really rooted into the Vine. I’m just rooted into my own stuff here.”
It was necessary. I needed that. I want to talk a little bit about the transition in a minute, but that’s Jesus as the True Vine. This is the question I want us just to be thinking about…What are you linked into? From where are you drawing your life?
2. The Vinekeeper. Jesus says, “I am the True Vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser [or the Vinekeeper]. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-2) All right. We need to unpack this a little bit. What’s the Vinedresser up to? What is the heart of the Father?
First we need to know the goal of the Father, according to Jesus, is to bring forth the best fruit from the branches. Everything the Father does to the branch in tending it is to bring out the best fruit. We have to keep that in mind, especially at times when it feels like maybe we’re getting pruned or it feels like stuff is not going very well. Remember everything we’ve learned so far from this passage (John 14, and now John 15, A Journey Home). You have a good Dad. He is a trustworthy Dad. The thing this Dad does is to bring forth the best fruit.
The next question is…What is fruit? Sometimes you hear it taught that fruit is winning souls. That’s certainly true. There are several places in the New Testament that talk about the fruit of salvation or fruit of people coming to faith. But you also have passages in the New Testament that speak of the fruit of the Spirit, inward character transformation: love, joy, peace, patience, and so on. What’s really fruit? What is the fruit the Father is looking for? What is the fruit the Father is desperate to draw forth?
Actually this passage itself sort of helps define fruit. If we pay attention to the Scripture right here that Jesus is talking about, look what he says in verse 5. He says, “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit…” (John 15:5) Here is Jesus saying, “If you abide in me and I abide in you, you bear much fruit.” Then go down to verse 7. He uses almost the exact same phrase.
He says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you…” So just like what he said in verse 5. “Whoever abides in me and I in him…” (John 15:5) “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you…” Almost exactly the same. Jesus is the Word of God. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7)
If you’re looking at the parallels… “You abide in me; I abide in you. Bear fruit. You abide in me; my words abide in you. Ask whatever you wish; it will be done for you.” You see the parallel between fruit and seeing God’s purposes accomplished on the earth, asking whatever you wish, and it will be done. What Jesus is here defining as fruit is the ability to recognize what’s on the heart of God, to recognize the will of God for any given situation, and partner with God to bring that into the situation. Does that make sense?
It’s a partnership of prayer. It’s a partnership of dependence, but it’s ultimately saying, “God, what do you want to do in this situation? Is somebody coming to faith? Working with someone, loving someone, displaying love, joy, peace, patience?” All sorts of these qualify as fruit. As Jesus is defining fruit here, he is saying, “It’s knowing the heart of the Father, partnering, asking, and seeing the heart of the Father become displayed in the situation.” That is awesome fruit!
That’s what the Father is looking for. He is looking for branches linked into the Vine through whom he can bring forth the fruit of his will in every situation, not for our own benefit but for the benefit of those around us. Does that make sense? This is what the Father is looking for. How does he get it? How does the Vinedresser, how does the Vinekeeper, draw forth this fruit?
In order to understand that, we have to take a quick tour through sort of ancient viticulture. I don’t know why they call it viticulture, but that’s what you call raising grapes and tending to vines. I have a couple of slides I want to show. How did you raise vines in the ancient world? A grapevine left to its own devices just kind of grows everywhere. If you want it to give the best fruit, you have to train it.
In the time of Jesus, one of the ways you would train your grape vine would be to actually put it up over a little stick. Here, on the slides, let me show you something from Pliny’s Natural History, one of the very first encyclopedias ever. It was written between AD 77 and 79 (so just a little bit after the time of Jesus). He is talking about how you train a vine. He says there are a few different ways, five different ways to train it.
On that top quote, you can have it “with the branches spreading about on the ground, or with the vine standing up of its own accord, or else with a stay but without a cross-bar, or propped with a single cross-bar, or trellised with four bars in a rectangle.” Did everybody get it? It’s a little bit complicated.
Basically, what he is saying is there are various ways to grow a vine, but one of the best ways is to make sure the vine comes up off the ground so the fruit is not lying on the ground, the vine itself is not lying on the ground. The wind can pass through. The sunlight is better. Actually, when the Romans came to the land of Israel around 60 BC, they were the first to introduce full-on trellising that would have supported a whole vine.
Then it’s not just training the vine, but Pliny also talks about how you treat the vine, how you prune the vine, how you cut it so it bears the most fruit. He talks about, “Thus there are two kinds of main branches; the shoot, which comes out of the hard timber and promises wood for the next year is called a leafy shoot or else…a fruit-bearing shoot, whereas the other kind of shoot that spring from a year-old branch is always a fruit-bearer.”
Okay. This is a little bit complicated, but if you really study in there what’s going on, he is saying there are essentially two kinds of branches. One branch is the kind that’s a year old, because year-old branches give fruit. There’s another branch that you leave on the vine so it can bear fruit the following year. Are you with me so far? There are two kinds like that.
When do you prune? So you’re looking. Okay, you have to train the vine. You have to make sure you’re keeping the right kind of branches on the vine, the kind that are fruit bearing or will bear fruit the following year. Then when do you prune? What’s the sort of cycle, the seasons, of ancient pruning?
For this, we have to go to another ancient document. If you want to read about all of this, there’s an article by Gary Derickson called “Viticulture and John 15:1-6” out of the Dallas Bibliotheca Sacra. It’s a really good article, even though the name sounds less than compelling (“Viticulture and John 15:1-6”). You can just actually Google it, and it will come right up. It’s super helpful.
He looks at this Papyri, and out of these Papyri (these little sheets of ancient documents they found), they found a receipt from a vinekeeper, basically like a landscaper, who had charged the owner of the vineyard for certain services. In the sheet, he wrote down, “These are the things I’m going to do. This is my contract with you as I keep track of the vines.” What you see is there’s this definite season to how the vines are kept.
The first thing, the most important thing, is after the harvest in the fall. All the grapes have grown and everything else, this big, luxurious vine and everything else. There’s a very hard pruning. I mean, they cut it back. I’ll show you a picture of this in a second. They cut back lots of woody branches right there at the fall. Then they take the leaves, throw them outside the mud walls. They basically clean up everything at the end of the harvest season so the vine will go dormant. It will rest. The roots will go deep.
Then in the dormant season, this is what he says he did. He planted as many vine stems as necessary, digging, hoeing around. So he just tends to the earth. Then in the springtime, he says, “We being responsible for the remaining operations after those mentioned [in the post-harvest, in the dormant season], consisting of breaking up the ground, picking off shoots, keeping the vines well tended, disposition of them, removal of shoots, needful thinnings of foliage.”
He is talking now about the time in the spring when the vine begins to grow. The right branches have been left on, but not much else. Now the vine is beginning to grow, and the good vinekeeper comes along, and he gently prunes in the springtime just little sprigs, little things like, “Oh, that’s going to take energy off. No, let’s not do that.” It’s not like the vine is getting all out of control. It’s just taking care of that. It’s tending to the growth of the vine through the season.
Let me give you a couple of pictures. I know this might be a little heavy if you’re not an aspiring horticulturist, but hopefully it will shed light on the passage, so stick with me for just a minute. Here is a picture of vines after the harvest, pruned back hard. Do you guys see how there’s not much there? I mean, really all the leafy, green foliage is completely removed.
Then the spring comes along, and you see these little shoots begin to pop out. Out of these little shoots, some of them are going to be the right ones. Some are going to bear fruit. Others are going to be saved for the following year to bear fruit. Others need to be removed because they’re in the wrong place. They’re not ever going to be fruitful. They’re just going to be a distraction. Then finally as the summer approaches, you see those little nubs of a vine have burst forth into this lush, long vine full of branches and bearing all kinds of fruit.
Left to its own devices, a grapevine will look like this on the left. Crazy! The problem with this is on the right, what you see is sparse kind of nasty, wild fruit. It’s not concentrated. It’s not focused. Look at those clusters of grapes. Let’s go to the previous slide. Look at those clusters of graces compared to those clusters of grapes. One is rich and excellent. The other one is kind of hit and miss. Go back to that forward one. Yeah. It’s kind of hit and miss there.
So you guys see how that all works? Do you see a little bit? Now if you had an ancient field and you’re living in the first century and you needed to grow some grapes for whatever purposes, now you have at least a basic primer to it. With that in mind (and this is very important), Jesus says, “…my Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1-2)
Now we have two things the Father does. We have two words. The first one. “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he…” (John 15:2) The Greek word is airo. The next thing he does is, “…every branch that does bear fruit he…” (John 15:2) The Greek word is kathairo. These are the two ways. We’re asking the question, “How does the Father bring forth the best fruit? How does the Vinekeeper bring out the best fruit from the Vine?” He airos, and he kathairos.
Now in all the English translations, when you read airo, it’s translated, “He takes away.” Pull up the slide. Here you go. There’s our verse. There’s our Greek word airo. Three sort of possibilities for this word are “to lift from the ground, to lift in order to carry, and to carry off [or put away].” In the gospel of John, the word itself appears 24 times. Eight of the times, it means just to lift up. The remainder of the times, it means to carry away. The idea is you can lift up or lift up and carry. It’s kind of a broad word. It can have several meanings.
When Jesus talks about picking up your cross, this is the word he uses (picking up, like this, airo). These definitions are from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. The question becomes, “How should we translate what the Vinedresser does to every branch in me that does not bear fruit?” Is it that he takes it away, or is it that he lifts it up?
Using what we’ve just learned about ancient vine growing and what Pliny said about branches that don’t bear fruit, Pliny says actually a good vinedresser would not necessarily cut away, remove, a branch that does not bear fruit. Rather, he would train it. He would put it up on the stake, put it up on the ledge, put it up on the trellis.
Here Jesus is saying, “My Father is the Vinedresser, and he airos the branches that are not bearing fruit.” Why would a branch still be left on the vine even if it’s not bearing fruit? Well, we saw. So it will bear fruit the following year. We can very easily imagine the possibility in the early springtime as Jesus is walking through the evening, and there’s maybe even a vineyard on one side or the other of the path where they’re walking down to the garden of Gethsemane.
The disciples have grown up, and they know about the rhythms of how you cut back vines and everything else. You could think about Jesus envisioning a vine like this one, where one of the branches here is properly trellised and the sunlight is on it, but another branch has gone off its guide. It’s lost its way. It’s not growing in the direction in which God has called it, made it to grow. It’s not bearing fruit. It’s down in the mud. It’s mucky and everything else.
Well, given the practices of the time, here in this situation, a real vinedresser who wants to draw forth the most fruit from his vine actually would not cut this off. Do you know what he would do? He would lift it up, make sure it’s trained so it can begin bearing fruit the next year, because it is, after all, a branch that’s in the vine.
It changes the way you read that passage. It’s not a make-or-break moment. It’s not something I’m going to be super dogmatic and fight you to the grave about, but as I read it and as I’ve done the history, and I’ve read probably 25 commentaries on this passage this week, there’s a lot of debate. It’s not an easy one to interpret.
What seems to me is that what Jesus is saying about the Father is when he comes along to a vine and he finds a branch that’s linked into the True Vine but has fallen face down in the mud, that is not bearing fruit, that’s lost its way, it’s off the path, do you know what the Father does with that? He comes along. He is a good vine keeper. He lifts it up. He lifts it up and says, “All right. Now grow rightly. Begin bearing fruit.” His heart is the heart to restore.
This doesn’t take the edge off the passage. I mean, even down at verse 6, Jesus is very clear. If you’re not in the Vine, you wither and die. That’s that. No good. Jesus is not pulling punches here. There is a reality that, apart from the Vine, we cannot draw life. What seems to me here are the two things the Father does when he is keeping, tending a vine. The first is he lifts up the vines that are fallen.
Then the second is this other word kathairo, which mean he prunes. He prunes. He cuts back those little sprigs that could be distractions, those things that would subtract from the way the vine and the branch are bearing fruit. The interesting thing about pruning is that left to its own devices (like we saw), a grapevine will grow inward, and it will stop bearing fruit. It needs the cuts, the pruning of a skilled vinedresser, in order for it to remain growing outward and bearing maximum fruit.
If you talk to someone who grows grapevines, they will tell you the single most important thing for the vigor and the fruitfulness of a vine is not the soil. It’s not the rain. It’s not even the sunlight. The thing that develops the vine most dramatically is the pruning. The skillful cuts on a vine are what cause it to grow effectively.
Notice this. When Jesus is talking about how the Father does this, the Father doesn’t just show up and look at the vine and say, “Oh, you’re a little bit out of control. Why don’t you cut your own leaves off there?” That’s not what he does. The Father does the pruning. The Father comes in, and he himself is the one who removes things that will be distractions, who removes things that will draw attention away from the process of producing fruit.
This can be painful. I mean, the pruning shears. We probably have this experience even in our own lives. If you haven’t, you have to wonder if you’re even plugged in to the right vine. Sometimes the Father comes along. He says, “I need to cut that. I need to prune that. I need to remove that.” Sometimes it’s bad stuff. It’s distractions. It’s worldly things. It’s greed or sanctification. He just snips away. Sometimes it’s good things. Sometimes he prunes good things so we can be focused on the best things.
I was thinking about this. You know, I shaved my beard. You might have noticed. I was personally in a pruning situation this week. I was eating chicken wings, and my beard had grown very long from… Yeah, that’s a gross image, isn’t it? Yeah, but you know, Fourth of July. You eat some chicken wings. It’s what you have to do. My beard had grown long in Israel. I’m eating, and I’m like, “These two things just can’t mix. I love chicken wings, and I love my beard, but I have to shave my beard so I can eat these chicken wings in peace.”
So I pruned something good, which was my beard. Also, my wife prefers not to sleep next to a human scrub brush, but that’s another part of it. That’s a silly example, but we all know what it’s like when… You know, life. We’re hooked into the Vine, and life is opening up ahead of us. We have all sorts of opportunities. You have chicken wings and growing a beard and all these other things you can do.
You think about your life. Amazing doors are opening, and you go, “Oh my. I need the Father to help me discern here what to say yes to, what to say no to.” He comes along, and he begins to prune. Here’s what happens when we get pruned. Our focus is back to the Vine. We draw closer to the Vine.
In the seasons of pruning, that intermingling of life between the vine and the branch is enriched and gets deeper. Our attention, instead of all this other stuff going off this way, is right to the Vine, right to the fruit, richer, bigger fruit, seeing the heart of God, the will of God, and bringing it into reality and partnership with God.
I was thinking about that time, you know, that little first venture in ministry for me. You know, I’m telling these stories. That’s kind of in my job, but it could be any of us, any of our jobs we’ve had, or all sorts of different things where we find ourselves linked into the wrong vine or being pruned or whatever it is. I remember that season after the summer where we were sitting there in the park. There were six to nine of us meeting every week. It’s just not going anywhere.
I went to Buddy, and I said, “Buddy, this is not working.” He goes, “All right. Stop doing it.” I mean, it wasn’t like he lost a whole lot there. I was like, “Okay.” I went in to this sort of dormant season myself. It was really like the Lord just pruned that whole part off of me. He needed it to. He needed me to go dormant. I remember resting and feeling I had to sort things out in my soul. The pruning hurt. My ego was damaged. I was pretty sure I was going to be out of church work in the next several months because obviously I was no good at it.
I was just sitting there like a little nub of a branch. In that time, the Lord just drew me close and helped me reestablish some roots in him, not in my own ego, but just like, “Hey, this is your vine here.” The growth didn’t start right away (I mean, outwardly), but I could feel a new life coursing through me as I was coming home, as I was coming back to the Vine, as I was abiding once again. After the pruning and everything else, life began to flow, and my heart began to change.
It wasn’t so much about me anymore. I’m still growing. I’m still learning how to abide, but I can just think of that as one of the most intense pruning seasons of my entire life. The things that have come out of that now are so much bigger than I could have imagined, you know? I mean, stuff I wouldn’t have ever thought about. I had this idea of being the superstar college and singles’ pastor of Gwinnett County, maybe even Atlanta. That thing totally died, cut away, withered. Took care of it.
What’s happened? I mean, we just got back from Israel. I can’t tell you all the details because it’s still so much in formation, but we’re having meetings over there that could open the way for us as a church and as actually an American community of believers to not only bless the Muslims or the Arab Christians there but also work alongside the Jews and bless them and work to help them reintegrate some of the folks who are coming in from around the world, Jewish Diaspora communities coming in.
We’re just looking at this going, “Wait a second. Are you kidding me? This is huge. This is stuff that comes right to the very heartbeat of the whole country! God has brought us as a church into this little place. Yes, prune me! Man, if I’m growing off in the wrong direction or I’m excited about the wrong thing or I’m plugged into the wrong vine, yes, Father, come prune me. Take that stuff away, because I want to be involved in the best stuff.
I didn’t even know where Kosovo was five years ago till I was on a trip over there, and we started to meet with these guys. Now we’ve seen everything that’s growing out of it. Next week we’re going to have like a dozen of the civic leaders, the politicians, from the region where we work visiting with us. We’re going to be hosting them. It’s going to be powerful. We’re going to see all sorts of amazing stuff.
We just think, “Man, I could never have dreamed that kind of fruit. I had no idea that was on your heart.” Do you know what was on my heart? It was just this little tiny dream to be some kind of guy in ministry. Here’s God pruning back. Ouch! It hurts! Oh my, look at the fruit. Look at what’s coming out now. I can only be grateful. Apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.
3. The branch. This is pretty simple (our job). It’s actually a lot better to spend our time talking about the Vine and the Vinedresser because our job is very basic. Jesus says, “I am the Vine; you are the branches.” (John 15:5) It’s an image of organic unity, life sharing, mingling. We flourish as we’re in relationship with him and with others. Jesus’ command to abide is interesting. It means to remain, but it also in the Greek is very connected to the word we use for home.
See, the idea of abiding really goes along well with the journey home. It’s the idea that we’re making our home in the Vine. The same thing is true in English. You know, we talk about abide, but we also use the word abode, right, to be our home or something like that. The same thing is going on here. How do we abide in the Vine? It’s not a huge, big effort. It’s not something we kind of add on to our daily checklist of things. “Have to mow the lawn. Have to go to work. Have to go to the grocery store. Have to abide for 20 minutes.”
It’s actually something that is a part of who we are. We’re linked in. It’s in this cycle. It’s sort of a mystical mystery of connection with God. This is not the first time Jesus has used “abide” in the passage. In John 14:10, he talks about how he abides in the Father. Then in John 14:17, he talks about how he and the Father will abide in us through the Spirit. Now he is calling us to abide back in him. It’s like we’re getting invited into the very life of God as we abide.
So the questions. Here are the things we need to talk about, the questions we need to process as we finish here. First, from where are you drawing your life? Are you plugged into the Vine? Are you sticking to the Vine? Second, what are things the Father might need to be pruning? Good things even? Distractions? All sorts of different things.
How can we submit to the Father’s lifting and pruning? Some of us resist it, but how do we stick to the Vine? How do we submit to the Father? Then how do we stay there? Because abiding, like I said, is not just a momentary thing. Abiding is a process. It’s over time. We learn how to abide. Jesus talks about his words, his love, abiding in us.
It has this idea of learning how to remain in this Vine for all of our lives, letting the Father continually come through the seasons of dormancy and fruitfulness, through the seasons of pruning and lifting and training. Year after year as we’re connected to that Vine, watching as things grow out that we couldn’t even have dreamed, fresh fruit that is beyond our understanding, exciting stuff we didn’t imagine, painful stuff that results in glory. How do we really abide?
Jesus tells a parable in Luke, chapter 15, about a son who went to his father, and he said, “I wish you were dead. I’d like your inheritance. I’d like to run away.” He decided to uproot and plant into another vine. He realized as he withered and died face down in the mud among the corncobs fed to the pigs that maybe he could go back home to his father and there be a servant, because even the servants are treated better than the slaves in this foreign land.
He woke up, and he headed back home. As he came home, it wasn’t a father who was there saying, “Oh, I’m sorry I cast you out. Oh, I’m sorry I removed you.” It was a father with wide-open arms who said, “No, come back in. Welcome home.” The older son who had stayed home the whole time thought he was doing everything right. He had obeyed all the rules. He was plugged into this vine, thinking, “Oh, I have it all made in the shade. Good to go.”
Then what happened is when the son came home and the father showed mercy, it also revealed the heart of the son was linked into the wrong vine too. He was linked into a vine of his own performance and achievement, what he had earned. He cared more about the father’s stuff than himself too and the father.
You have a picture there in that parable of two sons who both need to come home, two sons who need to be linked back in to true relationship. The best news of that parable in Luke, chapter 15, is that the father stands there with open arms and says, “Come.” Jesus says, “Come. Be with me. Come. Link into this Vine.”
That’s what we’re going to be talking about this week in our small groups. Also, we’ll have a prayer journey, a chance to come over here Monday through Thursday night. They have the auditorium all set up. Just come over for half an hour or 45 minutes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. You can bring your kids. Just think about abiding. Think about being with God, praying, connecting with God. It’s a great way to engage.
Here are the things, as we close, I want to ask God to just work on our hearts with. “Lord, am I stuck to the right vine? If not, bring me back into the right Vine. Lord, am I submitted to the pruning and the guidance of the Father? Lord, how can I stay in that Vine so I might bear much fruit?” Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for this passage and for the way you teach using real vines. Lord, as we now move into worship in song, in our giving, Lord, in our taking of Communion that’s set up out front, Lord, just draw us back to you. Draw us back to the True Vine. Reveal if we’re in the wrong vine. Draw us back, Lord.
Lord, we want you to know also that we open up our lives. We give you permission and freedom to prune as you will. Finally, Father, we want to direct our hearts toward abiding, just remaining linked in to you. Come now by your Holy Spirit. Root us. Welcome us back. Link us in to the True Vine, Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.