Then if you will, turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 15.
We're going to be reading verses 1 through 8 and verse 16.
Now we're looking at the I am statements of Jesus Christ.
For some of these statements, you will notice they focus in on our human need.
Last week I am the good shepherd.
As Christians we need Jesus Christ as our shepherd.
This week another one.
The vine.
And what this passage of Scripture is going to show us is your need to be connected to
Christ to make it in this world.
You need Christ just as much as you need food, water, companionship to make it.
Now let's see what Jesus says to his disciples as he leads them before he goes to the cross.
I am the true vine and my father is the gardener.
He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.
While every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
Remain in me as I also 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 you remain in me and I in you you will bear much fruit.
Apart from me you can do nothing.
If you do not remain in me you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers.
Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.
If you remain in me and my words remain in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done
for you.
This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit.
Showing yourself to be my disciples.
And then verse 16, you did not chose me but I chose you and appointed you so that you
might go and bear fruit.
Fruit that will last and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
Let's pray and ask God to illuminate our hearts with what Jesus has said.
Holy Spirit open our hearts so that we can see today how much we need Jesus.
Not only on Sundays but the rest of the week as well and throughout our lives.
Hear our prayer and grant to us a spirit that is willing to claim to Jesus.
I make this prayer in his name.
Amen.
To endure.
You look up that definition in a dictionary it will say to experience and deal with something
that is painful or unpleasant especially without complaining.
To remain firm under suffering.
This also means to put up with.
Now here's what surprised me when I was looking at those definitions.
They all have to do not only with our ability to persevere but also to put up with difficulties.
Now that's the really hard part.
I mean it's one thing to just go on and exist.
It's another thing to put up with difficulties.
And that word endure it's also can mean as a synonym to bear up.
To be patient.
To hold on.
To persist.
And there is a very good reason that the Bible compares your Christian life to a race.
Not just a sprint but more of a marathon because marathons are very painful and there is a
lot of discomfort but the runner continues to go forward.
Now I remember when I was at Covenant College and a professor asked me about running and
he said well don't you just love to run and I said well it hurts a lot.
It hurts to go to practice.
It hurts to get out there and run a race.
Don't ask me why I do it.
But it hurts.
And that's the way running is.
Now you can achieve a lot of good things.
It can help your health.
But running hurts.
Remember the first person who ran a marathon died because of the struggles that your body
goes through.
And I know that when we come to the Christian life it is not glamorous to talk about endurance.
So we would like to talk about other things.
It seems so much more glamorous in today's world.
The big events of the Christian faith.
But do you realize this that when the Bible talks about what a Christian must do to make
it in this world.
It often says that we must endure and overcome.
Now that doesn't seem very dramatic.
And it's not.
But it's the way life really is.
And what you and I have to face in this life is that we have to endure and we have to overcome.
And that is true because as Christians you will face temptations.
You will face trials.
You will face struggles.
It happens when you are tempted to sin.
Whether it is theft, covetousness or adultery.
But it is also true that it is a struggle in the Christian life as we deal with health
that starts the decline.
Our bodies do not function the way they do.
And we start thinking to ourselves why should I go on?
Maybe all this Christianity stuff is just a myth.
And that is the temptation.
When I was reading Scripture this week in the morning, one of the Psalms I read was
Psalm 90.
And listen to the truthfulness about the Christian life.
Our days may come to 70 years or 80 if our strength endures.
Yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow.
True statement from David.
So the question is how do we go on and endure?
That is the question really for us and I'm sure all of you have had to struggle as well
to try to endure in the Christian faith not to give up and pack it in.
Well here Jesus tells us here how we are to endure.
And it is the last, the seventh of the I am statements and here he tells us if you are
going to endure, you've got to stay connected to me.
Connected to Christ.
That is what all of us must achieve as we go forward in our lives.
Now let me start out here.
We need to be honest about the situation we're in because it's also the situation that occurred
in the Bible as well.
We've got to ask ourselves first of all what's going on here in this passage that Jesus would
utter such words as I am the true vine.
Well it is during the farewell discourse.
And Jesus is there with his disciples in the upper room.
He washes their feet to show that he is a true servant and they must also be servants
as well.
He tells them he's going to be betrayed.
He also tells them he is going to be killed.
And I'm sure his disciples are scratching their heads and saying to each other what's
going on.
Betrayed?
Turned over?
Jesus says to his disciples, and notice what he says, my children, I will be with you only
a little longer.
You will look for me and just as I told the Jews, so I will tell you now where I am going
you cannot come.
And oh my, can you imagine those disciples saying, Jesus, we've always been with you.
What are you saying?
You're going to leave us?
You're the master, you're the teacher, you're the Christ.
How can you say you are going to leave us?
How can you say you are going to die?
Say it ain't so, Jesus.
And I imagine if they fully understood it, they would be confused, disheartened.
And then I also want you to think about what they would face later after the death of Jesus.
Many of them would face persecution.
Many would be martyred because they believed in Jesus Christ.
Many would lose friends and family.
Not to mention the calm and aches and pains of living in this world.
And you would think of all that and you'd say, why would they hang on to this Christian
faith?
How are they going to make it if Jesus is not there to guide them through all this?
Now I want you to fast forward to the 21st century.
And I want you to think about some events that Christians have to face.
There is the woman who is caught in an unhappy marriage whose husband is abusive.
There is the woman who is abandoned.
Those things happen even to Christians.
There is the man who works for a very domineering employee who does stupid things and then blames
him.
There's lousy marriages, lousy working situations.
And if it's not those things that Christian has to deal with, think about those who had
to go through concentration camps like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
If I was in that situation and had to endure the suffering that they did, I don't know
if I would make it.
And I think today in Africa about Christian schoolgirls who were kidnapped and then raped
by terrorists.
And you wonder, how did they make it?
How are they going to go on and not give up the faith?
How are they going to do it?
Well you will never understand how they're going to do it and how you're going to do
it unless you are honest.
And we need to look into our souls to realize that on our own we can't make it by ourselves
because there are too many problems.
We may want heaven on earth now, but we must endure and overcome this world.
So the question is how?
Because the situation is not pleasant.
It is a fallen world.
Our Christians are rejected and good people do suffer.
So how?
Well he tells us, you need to stay connected to Christ.
And what you need to focus in on at first is the image that he gives us.
And that is of a vine.
But if you go back to the Old Testament, Israel was considered the vine of the Lord.
It was Israel who was supposed to be a fruitful vine.
And let's look at what the Bible says for a moment about what Israel was supposed to
be like.
If we go in our Bibles to the book of Psalm 80, we read the following about what Israel
was to be like.
You transplanted a vine from Egypt.
You drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it and it took root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade.
The mighty branch is with its cedars.
That was supposed to be Israel, a fruitful branch.
You read Isaiah chapter five.
What does it say about Israel in the first two verses?
I will sing for the one I love, a song about his vineyard.
My loved one has a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choices of vines.
And then in verse seven, the vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel.
That's what Israel was supposed to be, fruitful, showing the world who the God of the Bible
was.
But do you know what?
Israel was a lousy vine.
In fact, Isaiah goes on and says this, the Lord built a watchtower in it and cut out
a wine press as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it when I look for good
grapes?
Why did it yield only bad?
And what we know from the history of Israel, it yielded grapes of idolatry and prostitution,
not the fruit of righteousness.
But then Jesus comes along and says, no, not Israel is the true vine.
I am the true vine.
I am genuine.
I will produce fruit.
And then look at what it says about Christians and your relationship to that vine in verse
4 and several times.
Remain in me as I also 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.
Just what he also says, if you do not bear fruit, he cuts off every branch in me that
bears no fruit.
While every branch that does bear fruit, he proves so that you'll even be more fruitful.
Why did God choose you?
Well it tells us in the last verse, verse 16 that we read, you did not choose me, but
I chose you and appointed you so that you may go and bear fruit that will last.
If you're going to be a fruitful Christian, if you're going to make it, if you're going
to survive, then you've got to stay connected to Christ.
That is your knee.
You may be saying to yourself, I want to grow as a Christian, right?
Probably that's what you're saying.
Well if you do, then you've got to stay connected to Christ.
And here's what we've got to start getting through our head, because here's what the
average evangelical thinks.
I needed Jesus when I got saved, but afterwards it's all up to me.
It's not what Jesus is saying here.
He is telling us if you want to grow, you better stay connected.
You better stay connected to me or you won't grow.
And then you are saying to yourself, okay, I get the big picture.
Christ has to sustain me, right?
Right.
But then how, what do I need to be doing then?
Well, first of all, realize that when Jesus says he's remaining in you, he does remain
in you by the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit of Christ remains in you.
And we can look back a few chapters to chapter 14 in verses 15 and 16 where he tells his
disciples, I'm out of here, I'm leaving, but he says you ask me for anything in my name
and I'll do it.
If you love me, keep my commandments.
And he goes on to say, and I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate
to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ.
He dwells within each and every one of you.
He has not given up on you.
Do not only realize if you got to stay connected to Christ, you've got the Holy Spirit in you.
Now, let's say you want even more specific instructions on what you need to be doing
with this.
Well I'd be the type of person who is willing to feast on the word and prayer.
Use what it says here, he tells them, you've got to stay in my word.
You've got to obey what I have commanded.
That means you've got to have a love for the word.
Now a lot of times if you go to Walmart, you see lots of Bibles in someone's seat that
is yellowing because they never take it out of the car and they never read it.
But if you want to grow to become more Christ-like and to have the mind of Christ, you've got
to be Bible readers and you've got to pray.
And when you read the Bible, just don't think, I've got to cover 20 passages today to get
my brownie points with God.
No, you've got to read it and you've got to think, what has this got to do with me?
What does it tell me about God?
What does it tell me about my sin?
What hope am I given here in this passage?
And not only do you need to take care of the means of grace, such as the word and reading
it and prayer, but you've got to be part of this community.
I tell you, you will not grow in Christ if you are a lone ranger who never has anything
to do with church.
Part of the reason we have a community is, yes, to worship God, but it is also to help
each other to grow more Christ-like.
And the average American Christian probably thinks, I don't need a church.
Now you will never grow more like Christ if you separate yourself from God's people.
But I also want you to know this, if you look at what verse 23 says, it also means you have
to obey God.
It says, in verse 23, whoever hates me, hates my Father as well.
How do we go about hating God?
It is by not doing what His word requires and what does Jesus say, if you love me, you
will keep my commandments.
To dwell in Christ means to learn from His word, to wait upon the Holy Spirit, to work
within you and His word, to be part of a believing community.
That helps us, but it is also obeying what Christ wants from you.
Here's how we've got to think about our life.
It's like the womb of a mother, and in that womb is the child.
That child will not make it unless the mother provides for it in the womb.
And that child should receive what is being supplied by the mother.
If it doesn't, it will die.
We have to be connected to Christ in the same way and receive what He gives us.
And what is the result of all this?
You will grow in grace.
It tells us in verse 2 and verse 5, you will bear fruit.
You will start to look more like Jesus in such things as love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness.
The Father's will for your life is to grow in the fruit of the gospel.
And for some of you, the troubles you are going through is pruning.
And pruning only, it is not a rejection by God, but He is pruning you and taking things
away so that you will become more fruitful.
Because that's what's important, not being smarter than anybody else, not being better
looking than anybody else, not being more successful, but being more fruitful for the
kingdom of God.
So let me ask you, are you growing in grace?
Is God pruning you?
Are you bearing fruit?
And yes, life is hard and it must be endured, but even in the deserts of this life, a rose
can bloom.
And I started saying, we've got to endure.
That is what the Bible says.
I remember back when I was in college, I ran a 15 kilometer race, the longest I'd ever
raced.
And I had one of the best races of my life.
I went through the 5K mark faster than if I had run a 5K.
I went through the 10 kilometer mark faster than I'd ever run a 10K in my life.
And I had a very good 15K time.
You want to know why I had those times?
Because the coach who was a better runner than I was ran with me.
And every step of the way, he encouraged me to keep it up.
And when I felt like quitting.
And I think that is a picture of the Christian life.
We need Jesus to run the race with us.
And if you are a Christian, he is right there with you to the end.
Let's pray and ask God.
To our Heavenly Father, be with us now and help us to endure in the Christian life.
Help us, oh God, to rely on Jesus.
And Jesus nourishes us.
Nourish us.
Nourish us so that we can continue to do what you would have us do.
May we bear fruit.
Amen.