Transcript
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The lesson is from the book of Psalms, Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God, is he that made us, and we are his people. We are his people in the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the Lord
is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Open to chapter 15 for number 20 in this series of expositional messages we've been preaching on the life of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of John. We are now in the middle of what we call the Thursday night discourse. It begins in the upper room following the Lord's Supper. Our Lord
teaches the disciples and then he walks with them down to the Valley Kidron and he dialogues with the disciples. They ask him questions, he speaks to them. Some of the most impressive and memorable teaching of our Lord is in this passage or body of material that starts with chapter 13 of John up through 16 and then of course chapter 17 is the high priestly prayer of our Lord. So now open to 15 and we'll read this
15th chapter today. I am the true vine, notice the verse just before chapter 14, rise, let us go hence. They've left the upper room now they're walking down by the temple to the Valley Kidron to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus evidently dialogues with them as they go hence. I am the true vine, my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit
he prunes that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which 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. He who abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you
can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me he is cast forth as 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 will 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. 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, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. I want to make a few comments, technical ones, about that first paragraph. You'll notice that it's a parable or what the Hebrews would call a mashal, a proverb.
Jesus uses a figure, the figure of a vine and branches and teaches on the basis of that figure. I want to do just a make a few comments that will help make the figure impressive. Josephus in his book, The Jewish Wars, tells about the temple of Herod, which was built at this time. Herod was a very wealthy man and built a great temple that was destroyed in 70 AD. But on the wall of that temple, according
to Josephus, were carved huge clusters of tame grapes. Because you've got to understand, in fact, he says the clusters were as big as a man. That's a quotation from Josephus, as big as a man. So as they walked by and saw the temple, they would see these carvings of grapes. Not wild grapes now, because remember, for the Jewish tradition, the symbol of Israel is the vine and branches. It was tame grapes because wild grapes are no
good. You know, the so-called sour grapes. They come from grapes that go wild and have little tiny sour grapes. But the sweet grapes are the cultivated grapes. And Israel was seen as a cultivated grapevine. If you've gone to Napa Valley in the early spring, you look at them and say, I want to go see all the grapes. And all you see is a bunch of stubs sticking out of the ground. You say, that's the grapes
of Napa Valley? It's not very impressive. Because they cut them back. Because that's a tame grape. That's why they're so beautiful. If they were just going everywhere, you'd have a bunch of little tiny grapes, like the grapes I have in my house at 8635 Library Drive. And I have about three grapes per cluster, but I've got 45,000 clusters. And they're not sweet, believe me. But the cultivated grapevine is the grapevine that is carved on the
wall of the Temple of Jerusalem. And that's the image that our Lord now picks up and speaks to, symbol. The word abide, as you notice in this paragraph, has been used over and over again. Now, last week in chapter 14, I alerted you to that word. Because when Jesus said, in my Father's house are many mansions, or many rooms, the word that the RSV translates as rooms in the Old King James Bible, translated as mansions, is
the Greek word meno. Now, that word is the word that's used here in chapter 15 and translated abide. Same word. Jesus is doing a play on words. And probably since Jesus is teaching in Jerusalem at this time, he's teaching in Greek, the Greek language. He spoke two languages, the Northern dialect of Aramaic, and he also spoke Greek. So he's probably doing a play on words with that Greek word meno. Notice, over and over again, the word
is used. The same word as he made the promise of, in my Father's house are many rooms. Now, here, abide in me as I abide in you. Like a branch abides in the vine. It dwells in the vine. That's what the word means, meno, to dwell. Okay, one other word study I want to do with you is verse 8. It's very interesting. The RSV has done a strange translation of this word, but I want to give
you the word so you'll catch it, because again, it's a marvelous word. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. The word translated prove here, that's why it's an odd choice that the RSV would use the word prove, to translate the word genomai. It's genomai that's used here in Greek. Now, the reason I'm giving you that Greek word is that that is the root of the word
genesis. It means originate. That's its basic meaning in Greek, to originate. In fact, the book of genesis is named from this word, genesis, or original. First, originate, the originating book. And it's the word for birth in Greek. When it talks about someone being born, it's the word genomai that's used. That's the word that Jesus uses here. Notice, so if I were going to give a literal translation of this, and that's kind of, it would be a
little bit awkward to translate it this way, but this is what it means. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. Notice this sort of birth, life image there. And so you show your origins by this. You see, the origin of your fruit is divine. And you show your origins. You show who you are. Or I love the word Mishner when he wrote his book about Israel, called the book The Source. Because the
Jews are very source oriented. You show your source when you bear fruit. You show where it's coming from. And you prove, you show your source as my disciple. Isn't that beautiful? That's the word genomai. If you have your own Bible there, you can write that inside. Don't write it in one of the few Bibles. It confuses people. But if you have your own, you can write that. That's the great text. All right, now let us read
on. And we'll finish the text. And then I want to make some comments about this great 15th chapter. This is my commandment. Notice he's made the reference to commandment several times. And now he brings it up again. And we now discover what he means by commandment. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. This is no guilt trip. Jesus isn't saying, now get out there and love people. And giving you
then the kind of the guilty command to love. Instead, he says, share the love that I've given you. See, again, the origination is my love. Now show where it originates from. Love others. Carl Barthes says, we have an evangelical ethic. We have an ethic that flows out of a belovedness. It's not simply being told to love. And so then you have no resources. How are you supposed to do it? You can't. Even secular psychologists recognize this.
Eric Fromm in his book, The Art of Loving, says, you can't love unless you've been loved. And now our Lord is not saying, get out there and love people. You can't do it. You have to be loved first. And notice how Jesus teaches that here. You have to be in the vine before you can bear fruit. Notice, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. And here's one of the most
famous verses in all of the book of John. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Again, a reference to the coming death of our Lord. That a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. And what's the command? That you love. No longer do I call you servants. For the servant does not know what his master
is doing. But I have called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And appointed you that you would go and bear fruit. And that your fruit should abide. There's that same word again. It should remain. It should stay. It should last. So whatever you ask in my name, ask the father in my name, he may give it to
you. There's that reference to prayer again. It's about the fourth time our Lord has invited us to pray. This I command you. Love one another. And now the last paragraph tells about persecution. And I'll read it. It's a very interesting paragraph where our Lord says, You're like me, you're my servant, servant of your master. Don't be surprised if you're persecuted. I'm persecuted too. If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated
you. By the way, there's a little comfort in that, isn't there? That will protect you from paranoia. Paranoia happens when you think you're the only one persecuted. Believe me, there's no sure way to kill yourself than to have paranoia. Low-grade paranoia is the best way to go into a downward spiral. Oh, everybody's after me. But I feel so sorry for people that feel they're being persecuted and they're the only ones being persecuted. But Jesus said
the persecution that matters is the persecution that came to me first. And I was persecuted, so don't take it personally. I was persecuted first. You know that it's hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater
than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. There's a promise. But all this they will do to you on my account because they do not know him who sent me. So Jesus does not want the disciples to be surprised if they're persecuted. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sinned. And here's a repetition of the theme in John
3, where he says the light came in the darkness. The darkness did not like the light and hid from the light. And now our Lord picks up that same theme again. If I had not spoken to them, they would not have sinned. But now they have no excuse for sin. He who hates me hates the Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin. But
now they have seen and hated both me and the Father. It is to fulfill the word that was written in their law, and here he quotes Psalm 35. They hated me without a cause. Did you know that in the New Testament the most commonly quoted book in the Old Testament is the book of Psalms? Here's one more example of it. Jesus quotes the Psalms most of all. But when the counselor, now the promise again of the
Holy Spirit, that word counselor literally means the one who comes alongside, the parakalaitos, when the one who comes alongside, in other words the Holy Spirit, whom I will send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me, and you also are my witnesses, because you have been with me from the beginning. And that's the 15th chapter. There's so many themes in the 15th chapter that
we could discuss. I want to just zero in on a couple in our meditation today. I want you to notice what Jesus teaches in this part of the Thursday night discourse, but I also want you to notice how he catches your attention, because I think that's worth noticing here as well. That's as exciting a part of the message almost as the message itself. In this passage, in this part of the Thursday night discourse, Jesus definitely teaches
about grace. That is the predominant teaching of the chapter about his love, his originate, the origination of everything that we have comes from his love. And so this is a profound chapter on grace. But also in this agricultural parable, he teaches about freedom, and that's kind of a surprise, because you wouldn't expect that in an agricultural parable. After all, in agriculture, plants do what they're told to do, and yet he teaches about freedom in that passage.
So we'll see how he does it. Let's take a look at both for a few moments. First of all, he promises in this 15th chapter, he promises sheer grace to us. It's a promise of love, probably stated more powerfully, more personally, more directly in the 15th chapter than anywhere else in all the New Testament. Notice, I don't call you servants, I call you friends. Greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his
life for his friends. And that's the love that Jesus Christ talks about in this 15th chapter. It's the promise of love made personally and directly to each one of us. In fact, he even says, I chose you, I chose you for this love, and now you have it. But also the second, you might say, part of grace that's in this first promise is that he promises his aid to help us develop as his disciples, and reach
our goal as those who bear fruit. This is a tremendous portrayal of love. Not only the love that loves you, that lays his life down for you, but now listen closely to this, but the love that works with you. Have you ever had that experience in athletics or in drama or in music? Someone will come up to you and say, I want to work with you. If you saw Chariots of Fire, you know that marvelous moment
when the great coach decides to take on this young man and take him and train him as a runner so that he can go to the Olympics. When a great coach or a great musician decides to zero in on your life and says, I will work with you, that's love. And Jesus makes that promise. By the way, you know the word for prune here and the word for clean are the same word. It's the Greek word
katharizo. We get katharized from that word. I will clean you out. I will handle you. I will work with your vine, your branch so that you can bear fruit. The goal for your life, Jesus now shows that he cares about. He cares about what you're going to produce in your life. That is a marvelous mark of love. And that's the mark of love in this passage. Notice first what he does for us, that's the origination of
life. That's the vine side of this parable and his handling of the branch. He promises first to be the vine that when we're attached to it, we have life. But he also promises to work with the branch. And that's his love. Do you want that kind of handling by Jesus Christ? Do you want that kind of love where Christ handles your life, disciplines your life, cleans you out, prunes you so that you can bear fruit? Notice
it's for your good and for the glory of God to bear fruit. And what's the fruit? His love. It's very clear in this passage. Notice that the passage is in no way cluttered with all kinds of fruit. Some people have in a sense taken this passage and said, oh yeah, the fruit. Now then they go over to Galatians say, yes, the fruits must be the fruits of the spirit. No, don't do that this passage. The only
fruit Jesus mentions in this passage is his love. Believe me, that'll include all the fruits. But his love flowing through your life, that's what he promises. He promises you'll have that fruit. Can you think of a better fruit? What would you rather have at the end of your life? What do you want people to write on your tombstone? What do you want them to remember you by? Jesus says, I want them to remember that you bore
fruit and the fruit of my love. And I'll work with you so you can. That's his love. Now, the second part of the parable is the mysterious freedom part that I alerted you to a moment ago. This is an agricultural parable and most of the agricultural parables of Jesus don't have a freedom element in them. Like the parable of the, remember the parable of the mustard seed. The mustard seed simply grows like mustard seeds do. Little
tiny mustard seed becomes a big plant. By the way, you know, when Norm Kepke came back from Israel, he brought a bunch of mustard seeds and gave them out to the young disciples. Well, one of our older disciples, Paul Harbert, got one of those, planted it, and he says it's true. It's become a huge bush dominating his old backyard. From that little tiny mustard seed. It's true. A mustard seed simply grows. There's no freedom involved at
all. It just does what it's supposed to do. I mean, you can't accuse a pine tree of being a disobedient pine tree in your backyard. A pine tree grows like a pine tree grows. Water it, it grows. Monterey pines really grow. And same thing with eucalyptus. They'll grow. Now, here's an agricultural parable where our Lord takes a liberty with the parable. And he says that the branch has to make a decision about the vine. Notice, he
says to the branch, abide in me. It becomes, at that point, a freedom parable. Where Jesus calls upon us to decide where we're going to attach. What we're going to attach our lives to. And he promises that if you attach your life to the vine, you will bear fruit. If you do not attach your life to the vine, you will wither and you will die. Without me, you can do nothing. Now, agriculturally, we know it's true.
You sever a branch and it will not grow. It simply has to be attached to its root system. It simply has to be attached to its source of water, its source of life. But you attach it and get that attachment sound and it will grow all kinds of things. Oh, by the way, notice this other little freedom element. Did you know that part of the genetic mystery of branches is that the branch grows something that's unique
to the branch, not just a clone of the vine? In fact, do you know they can do this? They can take apple tree stumps and they can put a delicious apple into that stump, graft it in, say a red delicious. And then over on this side of the apple tree, they can graft in a yellow delicious apple. Now, I may be getting out of my in trouble here if I add too many things here. But you
can... I'll stick to apples so I don't get into trouble. But you could graft a Granny Goose or Granny Smith, a Granny Smith apple over here on this side. And do you know that out of all those branches coming from the same vine, from the same stump, would you expect them all to be mixed? Kind of a new... You'll have the red delicious growing out of the red delicious branch, the yellow delicious will go out of
the yellow delicious branch, and presumably the Granny Smith will grow out of the Granny Smith branch. In other words, the uniqueness of the branch is not tampered with. Part of the genetic mystery of that is that the genetic clone, the genetic nature of that branch is preserved, even though it's in this one stump, this one vine. And it's true that the grapes that your life is going to bear is going to be different than the grapes
of the person sitting next to you today. It's all going to be Christ's love, according to this great parable. His love is going to flow through you, but his love is going to flow through you in unique ways. And people are going to experience it in unique ways, and that's why you're needed. That's why Charlotte's self is needed in Turkey, where you wouldn't do much good with that tribe in Turkey right now. Because the fruit that
you can bear is not a fruit that can help... Until you learn their language, maybe, then you could help. But you see, you have special gifts that go with your branch-ness. And notice how our Lord teaches that in the parable. But also, the second thing he teaches in this freedom regard is that your number one responsibility is simplified, and that is to concentrate on the vine, not on the fruit. If you concentrate on your fruit,
you'll end up neurotic, because you'll be comparing your fruit to the other branch, and you're genetically different. Supposedly, especially if you're a yellow delicious apple, and you look and see that beautiful red delicious in the branch next door and say, it isn't fair. Frankly, I don't like the looks of yellow delicious apples. That's why I never buy them. When I have eaten them, I really like them. I think they're very delicious. But I think an apple
should be red. Now, what if you're a yellow delicious apple, and you just feel that way? I just feel cheated. All the pictures of apples are red. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the apple is red. Imagine if the witch had given a yellow apple. She wouldn't have eaten. And so, if you have your eyes on the apple, if you have your eyes on the fruit, you'll feel neurotic, and you'll be comparing yourself to everyone
else, and you'll become legalistic. But if you have your concentration on the vine, and keep your connection to the vine, the fruit will take care of itself. With the pruner, of course, pruning back the wild grapes to make them tame and to make them ripe. Let him prune you. Let him work with you. But you concentrate on the vine. Notice that's what the passage says. Abide in me. Abide in me. I'll take care of the fruit.
It's my will that you have fruit. In other words, Jesus has wonderfully simplified our lives. We're to concentrate with single steps on our relationship with Christ, and then other things take care of themselves. Then we don't compare ourselves to other Christians. We don't compare ourselves to other people. We do our thing in that good sense, because we're bound to Christ, and yet we do need each other. Because you need all the other branches to keep you
supported. Now I have one more thing to observe. I'll just say it quickly, because I think it's also very exciting. I want you to notice how Jesus catches the attention of his disciples, and how he catches our attention too in the 20th century. Notice that Jesus makes sense of a symbol out of their life. He does it all the time. And thanks to Josephus, we know about the symbol that he made sense of. They walk by
the temple. Here's this huge cluster of grapes. Jesus points to the cluster of grapes and says, I am the true vine, and my father is the husband, and you are the branches, and he wants to bear fruit through you. And they're looking at this great symbol, the symbol of ancient Israel. It's their symbol, and Jesus makes sense of it. He interprets their life to them. He doesn't tamper with the meaning of your life. He interprets the
meaning of your life. Now I wonder what your symbols are. What are the symbols that are represented in this room today? Think of what they might be. Symbols that represent you. What you feel, what you fear, what you love, what you yearn for. Jesus, if he were walking from this other place, from the upper room, to the Garden of Gethsemane, with you today, and believe me, he is, he would point out your symbols to you. He
does it all the time. And he'd make sense of them to you. And he'd show you how they can be fulfilled. That's why you need to tie in to Jesus Christ. And let him make sense of your life. I love a line from C.S. Lewis that when we are wholly his, we are more ourselves than ever before. And Alexis de Tocqueville came to America more than a hundred years ago. And he's the one that coined
the phrase, habits of the heart, when he saw Americans. He figured out what our habits were. And he saw some symbols of America more than a hundred years ago. And he came up with these symbols that made him sort of describe America. The first thing he said is he discovered Americans were individualistic. In fact, you know, it was Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who coined the word individualism for Americans. It took an outsider to say that
about us. He said, I tell you, the Americans are individualistic. The second thing he discovered was that we loved our families and our churches and local politics. And so Alec de Tocqueville came up with two insights about America more than a hundred years ago. He said that we were individualistic and yet we had that strange love of community. We like to cluster. And in the clustering, he saw the clustering represented by our faith, which gave us
meaning for our grapes, our families, and politics. And you know what de Tocqueville said in his marvelous book on the journeys through America? He said, I have one worry for America and that is if America's individualism gets severed from its roots. And you know, that's what we're suffering from right now with a lot of people. We're all individualistic, but we've lost our roots. The family is falling apart in many places. The faith? Shaky. Politics? No, we're
still good there. This week especially, we love politics. But look what he did. He looked at our lives and he saw some symbols to make sense of us. Jesus Christ is the same thing. And when he looks at our lives, he sees these things that represent us. Our individualism, our privacy, our love of ours, to do our own thing, we're very separate branches. And at the same time, we have all these things in our life that
yearn for community. Our family, we love our families, we really do. Do you know that a survey done among teenagers in Canada, where they discovered that among the teenagers, they did a survey of about 75% of them came from broken homes one way or another, and yet the number one yearning in the survey was they all wanted families, and they wanted good families. So families is still the yearning. And guess what else they discovered about
those Canadian youth? In this survey that was just done a year ago, these 98,000 youth in southern British Columbia, they discovered that their number one love of their lives, apart from their yearning for family and friends, their number one, you might say, love of their lives, was music. And if Jesus were walking today from the upper room to Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples, and if he were walking with 20th century youth, I think he
would point to the cluster of music. Notice how music fulfills everything de Tocqueville said. The earphones of the 20th century Walkman is the symbol of our privacy and the yearning for our individualism. We get to listen to our music by ourselves, unbothered by everybody else, and yet we don't want to do that all the time. We, through the music, we also find friends who like the same music, and we get our community in that love affair
with the same music. So there's that yearning for clustering, yearning for that community, and yet yearning to be alone, and privacy, and individualism. Jesus Christ saw the grapes and knew that that was the symbol of ancient Israel. It was the symbol of their life. You might say the symbol of their yearnings to be cultivated, that means to be community. To bear fruit that's unique, that's the individual sense of the branch. But Jesus said, ah, but those
branches and those yearnings must be attached to a living vine. Jesus said the same thing about our yearnings today. To know who I am, the great individualistic yearning, to know about how to build a family, to know how to have fruit that lasts, I need to have the source of life, and that comes from the vine. The number one thing you and I have to concentrate on is to stay attached to the vine. He takes care
of the fruit. Well, this is the passage that now becomes this part of the Thursday night discourse. The promise of his love and the challenge to us to abide in that love and let his love shine through us. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text. We thank you for what we've observed so far through the Gospel of John. How you find us, how you know how we're made, the promises you make to us, and the
call to discipleship in which you call to our freedom to decide to abide in you. We realize, Father, that if we do not abide in you, we cannot bear fruit. We don't bear the fruit that lasts. We wither. So Lord, may we today decide to abide in you and receive our life. And then also to become fruitful. This world needs the fruits of righteousness so much today. And may we in this room be people who share
that fruit. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
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Take your program with you, and this week, not just now but every day, pay for Margaret Kurtz who teaches and works with Japanese students, and our very own Resettlement Committee here in the Church, which is a track record of doing yeoman service for refugees in this part of California. Let us pray. Lord God, the only perfection, source of pure love, the motherlode of all righteousness, whose beauty is a thousand springtimes,
and who dotes over the face of a child the charms of a miniature rose, and whose greatness is limited solely by our imagination, we worship you and you alone. In a highly complex age, our God, bring us back to the fundamentals, when our machines are smarter than we are, and we don't know where they take us, send us back to the bedrock truth of the book, when temptations to botch it all entice us, remind us blessed
is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, when unreasonable ambitions have far exceeded our reasonable powers, speak to us, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters. When our direction is faded, restore the power of our will with the words, I can do all things to him who strengthens me. And when our purpose becomes frayed at the ends, may we recognize the accents of Jesus. Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and mind and soul and strength. Like the sharp, proud ringing of an old bell, may the challenge of the morning and the summons to prayer and the afternoon bestow us to a rich, electric experience of Jesus. And when the soul comes to a long dark night, may the words of our Christ be like a lantern ahead which sways the wind but never went out. Have faith in God. Our prayer is in his name, O Lord. Amen.
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