The Vine and the Branches

Now you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in Me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.

I am the vine. You are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Because apart from Me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers.

Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burnt. If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you. This is to My Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples." So far, the reading. Well, we see three things that Jesus wants to point out in our passage this morning.

Firstly, that He is the real vine. He is the true vine, Jesus says. As we sort of remember the scene, we've just seen Jesus celebrate the Lord's Supper. Right? If you remember Luke 22, Jesus gives the words, "This fruit of the vine which you are about to drink, do this in remembrance of Me."

The Passover meal that they were sharing had wine associated, and so Jesus is talking while he's maybe holding a glass of wine or the jar of wine is standing next to Him. And He says to them in this context, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener." Why does Jesus say to His disciples that He is the true vine? Why specifically, why does He use the word true as if there is a false vine? Why not simply say I am the vine and then go on with His story or His parable?

The reason is because when this image, when this word of vine came into the minds of a Jew, of these disciples, they were thrown back to the Old Testament where God's people, Israel, was called a grapevine. God referred to them in one of the metaphors to them being a grapevine. Psalm 80 verses 8 to 9, the psalm writer says to God, as a prayer, as a praise point, that you brought out a vine out of Egypt, talking about Israel. You brought a vine out of Egypt, you drove out the nations before it, and you planted it in the promised land. You cleared the ground for it.

It took deep root and it filled the land. We see the idea that Israel has been replanted from Egypt into the promised land, that it's a healthy plant that starts to thrive and grow in the promised land. Then Israel is given this responsibility of flourishing and bearing fruit in the land, God says. But unfortunately, many years later in Isaiah 5, God's heart with heaviness explains it in this way. God says that this well gardened vine has gone wild.

God says in Isaiah 5 that they had the best soil, even better than the Stellenbosch Pinot Noir grape. The best soil. He watered them. He protected them. And yet when they needed to bear good grapes, they bore wild grapes, sour grapes, useless grapes.

You couldn't eat it. You couldn't drink it. Isaiah 5 verse 7, God sums it up with these words. He says, "The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. The men of Judah are the garden of His delight.

And God looked for justice in them, but He saw bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but He heard cries of distress." This vineyard, this beautiful vine, it was to bear fruit of righteousness was corrupt and dirty and had gone sour. Finally, towards the end of the Old Testament in Hosea 10 verse 1, the prophet Hosea writes that Israel was indeed a growing vine, meaning it had increased in prosperity. It was growing in the promised land, but then he adds, as Israel's fruit increased, he built more altars.

As Israel's prosperity increased, in other words, they went down the path of idolatry. They had departed from God. But now Jesus comes and He says that He is the true vine. He is the true vine. Now we know that truth in the Gospel of John has much more to say than simply the opposite of false.

Right? Something that is genuine and truthful. For John, true also means faithful. And Jesus says that He is the faithful obedient vine. He is, in other words, the summary of true obedience.

He is the new Israel. He is the one that will go ahead leading a new nation under a new covenant, a new constitution that was already promised in the Old Testament as well in the book of Jeremiah, a new situation where God's law, God's way of doing things, His kingdom would be written on the hearts of His people. Where no one would have to teach them and manipulate them and influence them to believe and love God, they would love God by themselves. And we believe, as Paul would later write, that Jesus in His death on the cross would be showing that He really is God's true disciple, God's true follower, and the obedient Son. And so He becomes the true vine that God always wanted.

The one that would show the world what it means to live for God. But then Jesus also adds that His Father is the gardener. Just like in the Old Testament, God the Father is the one which even the true vine will entrust Himself to. And again, we see that there's an interplay between the two persons of the Trinity. We already saw that in John 14.

"I'm the way to the Father, but the Father uses Me to show you," and we see some of this coming through again where Jesus says that I and the Father work together. Although other passages in Scripture will show that the Father and the Son are in equal standing, what we see here is a unique glimpse at the interplay between God the Father, the first person in the Trinity, and God the Son, the second person in the Trinity. And that the Son, although equally in essence the same as the Father, the Son will submit Himself to the Father to become the agent of salvation for mankind. It is in this decision that Jesus will make this evening even with blood sweating from Him as He asked for another way, there will come a moment where He says, "Your will be done, Father." And He submits Himself to the plan of salvation of God the Father.

So we see, in other words, in the Trinity, that God the Son, Jesus Christ, becomes the doer, accomplisher, the agent of God the Father's will for earth. And in becoming the doer for God the Father, He serves the Father. He serves the gardener. So when Jesus says, "I am the true vine," He also says that "I am doing the will of the gardener." Jesus is introducing this new order, this new way of existence which God is finally going to bring people into.

Finally, Israel had failed. Israel was meant to be this influencer, but they could not maintain that. And so Jesus, in full obedience, will be that. And the plan starts with Jesus. He is a vine that has been planted now.

Where Israel failed, Jesus will succeed, and that gives us so much hope. No longer is our desire for God with all our fickleness and all our hearts that are prone to wander. No longer is desire for God the mark of our acceptance with God. Jesus and His faithfulness, not ours, is the distinguishing mark now of this faith. Jesus' obedience, Jesus' truth, Jesus' faithfulness, not mine, not my faithfulness to God is the determining factor of God's love coming to me.

Of God's acceptance of me is not based on me. It's based on Jesus. His obedience, not mine, is the reason for God's love of me. Therefore, Jesus is the true vine. He is the genuine vine, but He is the faithful one.

Then secondly, Jesus says that there are branches connected to this vine. There are branches that sprout from it. The vine is going to produce these little branches that will in turn bear fruit. Now when Jesus is saying this, remember, He's sitting next to a jug of wine or He's holding a goblet or something. The immediate connection is delicious wine grapes.

The fruit of the vine is this wine. But wine grapes didn't just happen. Well, we know today even if you've been to a vineyard, they don't just happen. When I was studying, doing a study tour in Jordan a few years ago, in Jordan and Israel, we drove by a man who was working in his own little vineyard. A wonderful little setup.

So great. I'd love to retire there one day. And he was cultivating his own wine, own wine grapes. But he was doing it not in the modern western way like we do and we know. He was doing it in the traditional way.

And how that worked is they planted their grape vines and they would, like natural grape vines, they would crawl and sprawl along the ground. We've got the ones that grow on trellises and we coax them to grow along a trellis. These spread. But the problem with this traditional system is that the grapes and the branches would be on the ground. And so there'd be all sorts of bugs and insects and mould and flooding and all that sort of thing that would affect each branch and each grape.

But what we saw as we were walking through this man's little vineyard is that under each branch that carried a few little grapes, he had placed a rock under to support, to hold it up, under each branch. And this is the image that God is portraying to His disciples, that God the Father is like this careful gardener. He picks up each branch. He inspects each little piece of fruit. He handles it with care.

He assesses what it needs. He's a good gardener, carefully inspecting the disciples of Jesus, and we are these disciples. If we call ourselves the followers of Jesus, God the Father is starting to do this nurturing work in us, lifting us up out of the dirt, making sure the mould is not affecting us, making sure the bugs aren't able to get us and eat us. And God cleans, Jesus says, these branches and He does it so that they will produce more fruit. That's why in verse 3, if you have a look at that, Jesus says, "You are already clean.

Why? Because of the word I have spoken to you." And just like the washing of Jesus of His disciples' feet in John 13 that we dealt with two weeks ago, Jesus says there, "You have already been washed. If you've had a bath, you don't need to wash yourself again. Just wash your feet."

Jesus in His death was going to wash away the sin of His disciples, but there is still a process of cleaning and pruning that happens in each disciple's life. This cleaning, this because of the word, is the cleaning of the gospel. The work of what Jesus will do, a once and for all cleaning, but there is still this work of refining and pruning and correcting. And then through this, we see that we need to be reminded of the gospel daily. This word we need to hear again and again because that is the power that cleans us.

That is the power that motivates us. The gospel not only saves us from the abandonment of God, but draws us into this new world that Jesus is initiating. The gospel, in other words, doesn't clean us just once. It continues to clean.

It continues to prune. And so friends, we have a Father God who is not interested simply in the vine and coaxes it along a trellis. He looks at each branch that comes off that, and each branch and its fruit. And he's concerned about that, and he looks after it.

And so if we feel the pruning work of God, the cleaning work of God, where things in us might need to be readjusted, where we need to be reminded of the gospel of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and therefore has liberated us and freed us from sin, correcting us not to go back down that path again, we need to be reminded of that over and over again. That is the work of His pruning. And God may do it and need to do it by taking things from us. God may take things from us physically in order to clean or to prune us.

He may make things difficult in our life. He may allow some very hard things to happen in our life. All of these things are part of the pruning process. And why? So that we may hear again the word of Christ, the word that makes us clean.

Son, daughter, you are forgiven. You may lose everything in this life, but if you have Christ, you have everything. That robs us, that takes away the issue of pride that caused us to stumble and fall. And so we find that there is a situation where we will be cleaned by God the Father as the gardener in order for us to be kept healthy. And then lastly, the outcome of this.

What Jesus says about the result of this pruning. The gardener prunes the vines, He says, so that the branches will be fruitful. These branches are commanded to remain in the vine. We are commanded to remain in Jesus. Three or four times Jesus uses this refrain, "Remain in Me."

The old English says "abide," which is "live in Me." "Abide in Me," Jesus says, over and over and over. In verse 4, Jesus says that we can't bear any fruit unless we remain in Him. And the fruit that Jesus talks about here is obedience. We cannot remain obedient to God.

We cannot remain faithful to God except if we are engrafted in the life giving vine, which is Jesus Christ. If Jesus was a true Israel, if Jesus was the true Son who would show the world who God is, then we need to be connected into Him in order that part of His obedience becomes our obedience. We've all seen what happens when a branch is snapped off a tree. We've driven past probably a few of them because of the storm. Right?

And now we drive past and it still looks a little bit green and there's still some leaves on it and there's still a little bit of life in that snapped branch. But give it a week or two and it's going to start turning brown. It is going to start withering. Why? Because that branch is not connected into the life giving energy and moisture of the tree.

This is what Jesus says about us. We have to remain connected with the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to return to Him again and again and again very deliberately, very consciously. That is why you can't just be a Christian that floats, that is a Christian in name, that does not have a relationship with the living God. You cannot be that and be a Christian.

Why? Because you will wither and you will die. "Remain in Me," Jesus says, and then He says this, "and I will remain in you." Live in Me and I will live inside of you. Energy and life and desire to God's will is only found in Jesus, He says.

He is the true vine. Only He can do it. But we have to be connected in order for us to have some of that as well. If we go to Him, if we draw near to Him, if we set our heart on Him daily, He says then we can't help but be filled by these things, by this life. And so His obedience becomes our obedience.

His joy becomes our joy. His works, what He did, will become things that we do. And so if you've struggled and you know it, honouring God, if you've struggled obeying God, it's likely that you've forgotten to remain in Jesus. You've forgotten to stay connected with Him. If I find myself not being patient, if I find myself struggling to love, if I find myself angry and I wrestle with all kinds of sin, it's because I'm not going to Jesus often enough.

We need to remain in Jesus in order to have His living power in us with the result that it will produce fruit of obedience, fruit of life giving work. And I would just want to give us a few points on how to do that. I should have written it up here, but just four points. How do we remain in Jesus? How do we stay living in Him so that He may live in us?

Firstly, it is for us to learn from Him. We must know who Jesus is. We must read His words. We must know the gospels, the things that He talked about, the way that He lived, the things He was busy with. We must learn from Jesus.

We must know our Bibles. The second thing is then not to simply read them, but meditate on it. We should be reading it and then mulling over these things. We should be mulling over His words. We should be thinking, how does that apply to me?

How can I use these things in my life? Meditate. Not just simply read because we've all been there. We've read a chapter and we can't remember what we read. Focus on a verse.

Focus on two verses. Colossians 3:16, "Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly." Let it dwell in us. Let us live. Let it live in us.

Thirdly, speak to Him. Go to Him. Pray to Him. We have to be committed in our prayer life.

Fourthly, we have to spend time with other branches. We have to spend time with other Christians. We have to be in small groups. It feels harsh to say that, but we have to. We have to come to church.

So often we say, well, Christianity, it's not about coming to church. I can have a relationship. That's true, disconnected. None of us are disconnected. You cannot be a disconnected branch.

You are connected in Christ, and Christ connects us. We have to be with other branches. We have to be with Christians. We have to have small groups. We have to be coming to church regularly.

Those four things, reading His words, meditating on His teaching, speaking to Him, praying to Him, coming to church, being involved in small groups is how we stay connected to Jesus. We're going to wrap up now. The fact that Jesus is the vine and that we are the branches gives us great comfort. Why? Because it means that our Christian faith is never alone.

We do not walk this journey as hard as it may be alone. We can only be as effective as the vine is, but thankfully, He is very. We can only be as fruitful as the vine enables us to be. We will not bear the type of fruit that the vine doesn't itself bear. Sure, it is possible for us to become less fruitful, but the pruning and the cleansing of a concerned Father and gardener will enable us to become fruitful again.

Believing the gospel word will remind us of the great truth of God's grace and favour. It will create new buds of life. It will trim away the things that cause dead leaves, the thing that causes pride and selfishness and self righteousness in us. It will slice off the growths of mould and complacency and self interest. It will create in us an urgency to bear good fruit for God.

This is what will happen when you are connected to the vine. And so as we journey to Easter, be reminded to entrust yourself to God. To entrust yourself to the gardener who prunes and cleanses. To be cleansed by reminding yourselves of the good news of Jesus and what He's done for you. So that with the result that you may bear great fruit.

Beautiful Pinot Noir grapes that make excellent wine to the glory of God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this intimate snapshot of how You relate to us. And Father, some of these things can sometimes be difficult to grasp. Some of these things take work to think through and understand, but thank you, Lord, that You've given us a way to understand.

Thank you, Lord, that through Your Spirit, You will correct us in these understandings. But Father, I pray right now for all of us that these words may find a home in our hearts. Oh God and Lord Jesus, how we desire to walk close to You. Lord, thank you for the promise that You will remain in us. That if we would go to You, if we would draw near to You through Your word, through prayer, through consistent doing of Your will.

Father, Lord Jesus, You will bring these desires and these urgencies in our hearts. You will confirm them with joy and gratitude in our lives. Well, and that is what we want. That is what we desire to please You. We desire to have Heaven in our lives.

And so, Lord, we entrust ourselves to You. We look to the cross again as our cleanser and forgiver. But we take up the new life that the vine produces and will give to us. We thank you, Lord, that You prune us and cleanse us and restore us again today. In Jesus' name. Amen.