Word of Salvation – Vol. 42 No. 39 – October 1997

 

Fruitful Branches In The Healthy Vine

 

A Sermon by Rev. R. Adams on John 15:1-17

Scripture Readings: John 15:1-17

Suggested Hymns: BoW 205; 153; 380; 385

 

People of God.

Someone once said a very profound thing: “A picture paints a thousand words.”  Something in that rings true.  As a kid I couldn’t read the family newspaper – but I knew where to find the comic pages.  I mightn’t have been able to read words too well – but I could read the pictures.

Maybe that’s why the Bible often uses word pictures to paint the church.  Maybe we need pictures to see the church.  So we can understand the mystery of this thing called ‘church’ – and where we, as individual Christians, fit into the picture.

Jesus uses a word picture in the passage of out text.  “I am the vine… my Father is the gardener… you, the people who make up the church, are branches growing out of the vine.”

A FITTING PICTURE OF THE CHURCH

Jesus uses a beautiful and fitting picture of the Christian church.  “I am the vine,” says Jesus, “you are the branches.”  And God the Father is the vine-dresser.

If you’re familiar with grape vines, you’ll know a vine has to be pruned.  You can’t let it grow wild if you want it to be any good.  Leave a grape vine to grow as it will, and in time it’ll become a tangle of branches, and stacks of leaves, all looking very green, but with no fruit to mention.  You have to get in there with secateurs, cut off branches that have no grapes, even cut back branches with buds on them, to give the remaining buds on the branch a chance to fill out.  But you only cut back new growth.  You don’t touch the old wood that has formed as a result of your pruning in previous seasons.

Jesus speaks to the Christian church as to a vine growing out of New Testament soil.  But He knew the Old Testament church was also called a vine: “You brought a vine out of Egypt… and planted it” (Psalm 80:8).  He knew that long ago, the Father was busy pruning old Israel with His Word.  In times past, God used the prophets as secateurs in His hands… to cut away dead wood… to clean up budding branches until He had a faithful remnant in the land.

Now you hear Jesus hinting, “I’ve been around for a while… I am the stump of the vine… I’m the old wood the Father has pruned… and now you are my new branches.  And just as the Father pruned the church in the past, so He is already pruning you by my Word… cleaning you up as it were… to make you a fruitful church.”  This is the church as Jesus paints the picture.  He is the vine… we are the branches.

A PICTURE OF A HEALTHY CHURCH

But don’t miss the point.  Jesus’ picture is of a healthy, fruitful, church.  Jesus’ life-blood, His life-giving sap, courses through its veins.  Believers are linked together in an intimate way to become a growing thing – an organism if you like – a whole, living church mutually joined to Jesus Christ.  The salvation we share is firmly embedded in Him.  Together we sing of belonging to the Lord.  Bread and wine boldly advertise how we’re joined to Christ, the stem.  Jesus’ word has taken hold in His church, to encourage us in hope, to instruct us in the way of obedience.  And yes, of course, we hear it in sermons.  We ponder it in study groups or fellowship groups, perhaps.

Hearts are renewed by the presence of His Spirit.  And our attitudes are shaped by His influence.  It’s true.  We don’t think in the old ways we used to.  We’re being pruned, as it were.  This church express its faith in a healthy way when the church together, listens to Him – and obeys His words.  And if the church is fruitful – as Jesus expects it will be – the fruit appears where it ought to, firmly attached to the branches, but only as they in turn, are solidly attached to the vine.  I’ve never yet seen a branch bear fruit by itself after it’s been severed from a trunk.  All of this, so the church can be fruitful for the purpose Jesus gives – so that God can receive the glory through Christ.  The only reason for the church’s existence.  Not any other reason we might care to invent.  Only the reason Jesus gives – that God can receive the glory.

If we want our Christianity to respond to Jesus’ life-blood, it sort of makes a lot of sense for Jesus to say, “Remain in me…  remain in my love!  Let my words remain in you…  obey my commands.”  Take, for example, just one fruit Jesus wants us to bear that we love one another.  Divorced from Jesus’ word, ‘love’ can become a ‘sugar-candy, anything-goes’ sort of love.  Jesus certainly didn’t mean that.  A gardener can say, “I love my roses.”  But he still grimly cuts back his beloved rose bushes – because he wants beautiful roses.  In the same way Jesus links love firmly with obeying His word – obeying His commands.

Those of you who are parents no doubt love your children.  When your child asks for something, do you give it regardless of what it is?  Is this how you show love?  Of course not.  You sometimes say “NO” because you DO love your child.  And you know that some things children want are no good for them – or for the family either.  So it is with the branches of a church.  Branches too, can hunger for things that are no good for branch or vine.  But if the church – all together – stays attached to Jesus in what we think and say and do, then wayward branches are likely to be uncommon rather than the norm.  All this has a bearing on what Jesus is hinting at here – a healthy, fruitful church.

IS YOUR CHURCH HEALTHY?

Now look at your own church.  Is it a healthy, fruitful church?  Or are you running out of sap?  Oh, you say, “But our lives are so busy.”  Time is pressing, too.  Yes, and we’ve tried it, haven’t we?  We’ve tried to use Christ as a sort of kidney-dialysis machine.  You know what I mean – plug into church for one hour per week, hoping to get cleaned up.  As if we can just plug in when our busy schedule allows it.  And then ‘pop’ the plug just as quick when we think something more important or more exciting is coming up.  As if anything can be worth the risk of running out of sap to risk becoming a dead branch to be burned.  Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing… – that is, apart from being firmly attached to the entire vine…  you can’t do anything that will praise my Father.”  For instance, if Jesus is the life blood, can a healthy, fruitful branch bear ‘sour grapes’?  What if some branches in your church have been in the habit of growing ‘sour grapes’?  Has anyone wanted to cry out in frustration: “God, I just can’t reach my full potential in this church… other branches are stifling my growth.”  Is that a sign of running out of sap?  Is that a sign you could be looking for ‘sap’ in some wrong environment?  A sign of wanting to bear fruit outside of the vine?  It can be.  It can be a sure sign of being cut off from Jesus’ life blood… a sign of not wanting His word to remain in you.

And yet, do we plead with God?  What do we want God to do about it?  Do we expect God to help us pursue individual ambitions?  Oh, we can call them FRUIT FOR JESUS if we like, but do they have the welfare of the vine in mind?  If you don’t have the welfare of the whole vine in mind, you might as well ask God for poison.  Check it out – is God being praised by healthy fruit on your branches?  Take a look at your own church.

WHAT IS A FRUITFUL CHURCH?

What does Jesus mean by being fruitful?  If you’re quick to answer, you might say it’s ‘obedience’ as such, or it’s winning new converts to the faith, or it’s practising ‘love’ of some kind – as long as you don’t mean a kind of love that’s alien to Christ.  Or you may answer that it’s growing in Christian character, or experiencing new found joy.  All of these may be commendable objectives in themselves.  But a branch’s purpose is to bear MUCH FRUIT – and ‘much fruit’ can’t really be any of these on its own.

‘Much fruit’ is more like praying earnestly in Jesus’ name for everything that will help you do all of these things, and more.  To obey His word.  To experience Jesus’ joy.  And so be able to witness effectively to Christ’s presence in your life.  And because Jesus stoops to love each one of us, to love one another without having to feign it.  That’s what it means for a healthy branch to bear ‘much fruit.’

Ask the Father for what will produce genuine fruit in you – and He’ll give it to you, no sweat.  Heidelberg Catechism Answer 64 suggests that if you are ‘grafted into Christ by true faith’, it is impossible for you NOT to produce ‘fruits of gratitude.’  Then you WILL hear God being praised.  Then His church will be genuinely fruitful.  The BRANCHES in YOUR church will be genuinely fruitful.

WHAT IF YOUR CHURCH COULD DO BETTER?

In all our imperfect attempts to be ‘church’ – in all our imperfect ‘churchiness’ – if I can put it that way we ought to say, “Thank God, we can still remain attached to Jesus.”  I guess we really should say, “Thank God, Jesus remains attached to us.”  Because that’s the way it is.

He says, “You did not choose me, off your own bats, as if that could ever be possible.  No, I chose you – I appointed you – to go and bear much fruit.”  And, of course, Jesus means fruit that will bring lasting praise to God.

But lasting praise will happen, to some extent, when the church is healthy and fruitful.  And that means when we, as a church, together, are fully attached to Jesus.  That’s His promise.  He gave up His life so He could call some ‘His friends’.  Isn’t He calling us ‘friends’?  Yes, He is!  Because He wants to reveal in our hearts everything He learned from His Father.  Just exactly what we need to know about His church, and our place in it.

Having a place in Christ’s church calls us to a life devoted to prayer in His name.  It calls us to a life that ushers forth out of gratefully obeying His word – not just His few words of command in this passage, but everything He has revealed from His Father.

And it flows into loving one another, and telling others about our joy in Christ.  Jesus calls us to all of these things, and we do them naturally because they’re not a pretence – they are a reality in our lives.

But we’d better be solidly attached to Jesus, hey?  Because, outside of the vine you can forget about trying to bear God-praising fruit.

Amen.