Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Milford

John 15:1-17 [NLTse]
“I am the true grapevine, and My Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch of Mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and He prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. ³ You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. ⁴ Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in Me.
⁵ “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing. ⁶ Anyone who does not remain in Me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. ⁷ But if you remain in Me and My words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! ⁸ When you produce much fruit, you are My true disciples. This brings great glory to My Father.
⁹ “I have loved you even as the Father has loved Me. Remain in My love. ¹⁰ When you obey My commandments, you remain in My love, just as I obey My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. ¹¹ I have told you these things so that you will be filled with My joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! ¹² This is My commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. ¹³ There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are My friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are My friends, since I have told you everything the Father told Me. ¹⁶ You didn’t choose Me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using My name. ¹⁷ This is My command: Love each other.

Sermon
Chapter 14 of John ends telling us that Jesus and His disciples have left the “upper room” where they just finished celebrating their “last supper” Passover Seder. I imagine that they have made their way through the pilgrim-crowded streets of Jerusalem, the air heavy with the smell of roasted lamb from all the Passover meals being shared throughout the city.

As they make their way out of Jerusalem and across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives, I think they must have passed through a vineyard with its row after row of grape vines strung out across their arbor-frames. The Lord stops at a vine loaded with branches as His disciples gather around Him. He finds in this plant a symbol of His relation to them. This natural vine is, in His eyes, an image – an earthly copy – of the true, eternal, essential, spiritual vine. And He speaks to them of His future union with them and all His people by directing them to this object that is before all their eyes.

Out in the distance, perhaps, is a great bonfire which Jesus and the disciples know is the hired workers burning the pruned-off worthless-branches to keep warm. And Jesus points there, too, to the fire, to bring home His illustration, as well…

[Pull out and held up a power strip. Advance a slide onto the screen that says, “JESUS”, and point back and forth between the strip and the screen until people get the idea that the power strip is representing Jesus. (Make sure the power strip is already plugged into an outlet.) Then pull out a lamp. Advance onto the screen a slide that says, “YOU & ME & OUR FELLOW CHRISTIANS”, and point back and forth from the lamp to the screen until people understand that the lamp represents us. Then plug the lamp into the power strip. (And the lamp will light up.) Then repeat that process with the other lamps, making sure one of the lamps doesn’t light up. After the last lamp is plugged in, look back at the lamps and make a big deal of noticing the one lamp that isn’t lit. Fool around with the lamp for a bit, and when it doesn’t light, theatrically unplug it and throw it into a trash can, having it make some great big crashing sound. Advance the slideshow to say, “FOR THE BURN BARREL”. Then go and plug another working lamp in its place…]

Jesus is One with His Church: He is the head, we are the Body; He is the husband, we are His Bride; He is the vine, we are the branches; He is the life, and we live that life. And yet I don’t think that most Christians think of themselves as a part of Him, as one with Him. No, we are such selfish creatures that we tend to only be aware of ourselves and our feelings in the light of our experiences: Us the center of all there is!
But the truth is that Jesus – not any of us – is the center of all there is. As Paul sings in the Christ-hymn of Colossians 1: “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through Him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through Him and for Him. He existed before anything else, and He holds all creation together. Christ is also the head of the church, which is His body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So He is first in everything. For God in all His fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through Him God reconciled everything to Himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.” (Vv. 15-20)

Jesus Christ is the center of life, the center of the universe: He is the visible image of the invisible God; He is the first to exist and supreme over all creation; He is the creator of everything there is, and everything there is was created specifically for Him, and He holds everything together; He is the first to rise from the dead, and it has been through Jesus’ blood that peace has been established throughout the heavens and across the earth. Yes, Jesus is the center! And Jesus says we are one with Him.

Before Paul had become a Christian, while he was leading the Jewish leadership in persecuting the Church, the Lord Jesus appeared to Paul, asking him, “Why are you persecuting Me?” The Lord made no distinction between Himself and His followers whom Paul was persecuting, between Himself and His Body, between Himself and His bride, between Himself and His Church: “Why are you persecuting Me?” Jesus asked.

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes that if you sleep with a prostitute that you are uniting Jesus with that prostitute. Paul doesn’t say that it is like uniting Jesus with a prostitute, he says, “Should a man take his body, which is part of Christ, and join it to a prostitute? Never!” (6:15) We are united, we are one, we are a part of Christ!

Which means that when you are going through disappointments and trials, that Jesus is going through them with you, too. When you are feeling alone and betrayed, you are in fact sharing those moments with Jesus Christ. When no one can know how you feel, Jesus knows.
When Jesus says, “Remain in Me” He is using the verb form of the noun for dwelling place. Jesus is saying, “Dwell in Me.” Jesus dwells in us, and He’s chosen us and given us a new life so that we may dwell in Him. And we do dwell in Him when we obey His commandments and when we love one another, laying down our lives for each other.

It is the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling in us and us dwelling in Him that results in the fruitfulness of our character that Galatians 5:22-23 speaks about, making us more loving and joyful, more peaceful and patient, more kind and good and faithful and gentle and self-controlled. It is the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling in us and us dwelling in Him that results in the fruitfulness of our ministries and witness, that Jesus says produces crops 30 times, 60 times, 100 times what was planted! (See Matthew 13:23.) It is the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ dwelling in us and us dwelling in Him that results in a fruitfulness that grows us to more often know and do the right thing, and a growing righteousness that results in eternal life.

Even so, like the lamp that didn’t light, we can sometimes look good and like we’re “dwelling in Him” to others, while not truly be dwelling in Jesus at all. Perhaps we have not truly understood Jesus’ message about the Kingdom; or perhaps we are that kind of person who has tended to live for Jesus with great joy, but when life’s troubles or persecution-for-being-a-Christian comes we fall away from Him; or perhaps the worries of life and the attraction of wealth have choked His fruitfulness in our lives? [to THE BURN BARREL!]

The Lord Jesus leads the disciples away from the vineyard and up toward the place they’ll be spending the night on the Mount of Olives saying, “I have told you these things so that you will be filled with My joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” (V. 11) Notice that the Lord did not say that you and I will have joy like His on account of these things. No. His joy – the Lord Jesus’ Own joy, because we’re a part of Him, His Own joy – will fill us. As He dwells in us and as we dwell in Him, such will be our unity, such will be our fellowship, such will be our communion, that that same joy Jesus Himself has on account of doing all that the Father sent Him to do – His Own joy – as we daily do all that Jesus sends us to do – His Own joy will be ours!
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And in that place as the closest and most intimate of friends, He hears and answers our prayers.