I am the Vine

Scripture:
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)

This Sunday, the pastor of my church has asked me to preach in the 9:30 am English service and my heart has been focusing on the words of our Lord in John 15:1-8. We have all heard that Jesus is the vine and we are the branches but there is so much more to this passage. First of all there are three main characters, Jesus, the Father and us and the chapter does not begin with Jesus and us, it begins with Jesus and the Father. Right from the very beginning of this passage we are told the the Father is the gardener and he "cuts off every branch" that "does not bear fruit."

Now think about this for a moment. God cuts off the branches. What does that mean? Jesus says that such branches, that is those that do not bear fruit, are "thrown away", it "withers" and it "thrown in the fire and burned." Now, I don't know about you, and I have not done a word study on the word fire, but I do know what image comes to my mind when I think about the word "fire". Yes, the lake of fire.

So we are the branches as it says in verse 5, but if we don't bear fruit, God will cut us off and we will end up in the fire. Now I know this is going to upset those who believe in eternal security, but I can't see how this passage can mean anything else unless we don't look at these words literally, and they are Jesus' words, and we look at them figuratively and say things like, "well, it can't mean hell, because that does not agree with what I believe."

The second thought I have about this passage is how important abiding in Christ and his Words are. Jesus says that if we remain or abide in Him, which I would contend is our praying and worship Him, and His Words abide in us, which I would think means reading, studying and obeying His Words, then and only then, will be bear "much fruit".

That being said, what is "fruit"? Well let's begin with what it says in Galatians 5:22-23 it says, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Even if we only look at this one passage about fruit and we look at it in conjunction with Luke 6:43 it says, "no good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit," it would seem to me we are in big trouble. Unless, we work very hard a confessing our sins and at doing that "if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and save us from all unrighteous." (1 John 1:9) All unrighteousness, that sounds like bad fruit to me. So it would seem that by confession we can eliminate the bad fruit and by abiding in Jesus and the Word we can grow good fruit.

Request:
That God will give me the words, the love and the anointing to preach what he has for the the church.

Prayer:
Heavenly Father, we are your vessels. We want to surrender everyday to you. We want to know you Jesus and we want to learn from you Holy Spirit. Cause us to see our sin, confess it and repent from it so that you can live your holy life through us. We surrender all, anoint us with your power to minister to the lives around us that need you so much. In Jesus' name. Amen