Remaining In Jesus

John 15:1-10

This conversation takes place the night before Jesus was to be crucified. His timing is perfect as usual. If he had said this three years earlier, today we would be teaching about how the disciples had followed Jesus’ command by staying with him throughout the three year ministry. But Jesus doesn’t say this early on in his ministry – he says it right before his death.

How odd it might seem that Jesus knows that he will not be with them anymore and yet he tells them at this point to remain in him. We have no choice but to recognize that Jesus meant after his life on Earth. Jesus is saying that after he leaves the Earth, he wants us to continue to remain, or stay, with him. He wants us to grow our relationship with him after he has gone.

He starts by saying the God the Father is the vinedresser. He is the guy who takes care of the vine. He tells us that he, Jesus, is the vine itself. The vine is the trunk that grows out of the ground and then spreads out in branches. He tells us that we are those branches. So now we have all the players in this parable. The image is that the branches bear the fruit. The vine provides the source of the nourishment to the branches. The gardener ensures that everything is working properly, providing all that is necessary for this complex system of life and growth to occur.

After laying out the setting, Jesus makes the crucial point. There are two kinds of branches – those that bear fruit and those that do not bear fruit. Did you notice that the gardener prunes both types of branches? Well, maybe prune isn’t the right word for what he does to those branches that do not bear fruit. He actually cuts off those branches. Those branches are removed from the vine altogether while the branches that bear fruit are pruned in such a way as to bear more fruit. So we reach the first important lesson that Jesus is teaching here. No one will escape the difficulties and pains of this world.

There are wolves in sheep’s clothing that will tell us that we do not need to suffer in this world if we have enough faith and believe that these things will not hurt or harm you. They will tell you that if you believe in Jesus, that you can speak life into the world and all sickness and illness and misfortune can be rebuked. But that is not what the Bible teaches us. Jesus says that they will hate us because they hated him. He tells us that we will need to carry our cross. He says that we will be persecuted for our belief in him. It actually appears that a little Bible study would show us that the truth is the exact opposite. By believing in Jesus, we don’t have a perfect life of peace but the exact opposite – we are now persecuted, degraded and ridiculed.

However, according to what we just read, not all our difficulties will come from the world or from Satan, but they may come from God! The vinedresser prunes us. Pruning isn’t a feel-good thing! Pruning hurts. Pruning is difficult. When God prunes us, we suffer! What!? God makes us suffer!? That’s not what I heard from those other preachers that were asking me to send my money so that I would be blessed. But that’s what Jesus tells us.

Throughout the Bible, we read about God putting His people through difficulties and even death, to bring about a change of heart, a change of attitude. When we become too comfortable, God will shake things up. When we think we have things under control, God will show us that we still have a way to go. He doesn’t do it because He’s a spiteful God or because He gets a kick out of watching us squirm. He does it because He loves us and He knows that we still have more fruit to bear. We have some disease (meaning sin) that needs to be cut out of our lives. He does it because He knows we could be better and He is getting us to that point. Some of the other images we read about are:

Zechariah 13:9
This third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are my people,' and they will say, 'The LORD is our God.' "

Malachi 3:3
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.

God is doing a work in us through the troubles we go through. Let’s not think that God is evil and that He causes us to sin. God tells us that He doesn’t tempt us. Only Satan tempts us. God will never cause us to sin. This is totally different than the pruning that God performs. Pruning hurts but it grows us and brings us closer to Him. Sin hurts us as well, but it takes us away from God. God would never cause something in our life that would take us away from Him. That is the work of Satan and though God has allowed Satan free reign on this earth for the time, his time is drawing to a close and he is working tirelessly to bring as many away from God as he can. But let us not confuse the work of Satan and the work of God. Though we will have trouble and the rain falls on the just and the unjust, we need to know God enough to recognize what is from Him and what is not.

Continuing on we see that Jesus tell us that the branches cannot bear fruit apart from the branch. He tells us that a branch doesn’t bear fruit on its own. It only bears fruit when it is connected to the main vine. This is Jesus’ second lesson in this parable. We cannot bear fruit apart from Jesus. No matter how much a branch wants to bear fruit, it is completely dependant upon the vine. Without the vine, there is no other way for nutrients to pass to the fruit. There will be no fruit at all without the vine. In the same way, without Jesus, we cannot do anything. We cannot bear fruit, no matter how hard we try.

But wait a minute. Are you saying that only believers in Jesus can bear fruit? What about all the non-believers who are good people? Aren’t they helping the poor and feeding the hungry? Aren’t they creating medical breakthroughs? Aren’t they bringing comfort to the hurting? It would seem that you can bear fruit apart from Jesus. Well, yes and no. Yes – you can bear fruit apart from Jesus but you need to define that fruit. As humans, we see that fruit and say, “It looks good. It looks very good.” But God sees that fruit and He is disgusted by it. It looks putrid. How can these good deeds look putrid to God? Because to God, all our own good deeds are like filthy rags.

Isaiah 64:6
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

The word used here for filthy rags is actually the same word in the Hebrew used for the cloth used by a woman during her menstrual cycle. We see this again in Ezekiel:

Ezekiel 36:17-18

"Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman's monthly uncleanness in my sight. So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols."

We can gain a little insight into how we see ourselves versus how God see us. We think we are doing all these great things, but God sees these things as horrible. That is how far our minds are from God. In this passage, the Israelite were doing what they thought was good – they were worshipping god through idols. In their minds, they were being good people. Through this worship, they were caring for the poor and feeding the hungry, just like it says to do in their scriptures. But God here tells them that they defiled the land and that their conduct was like a woman’s monthly uncleanness to him – or in other words, their righteous deeds were like filthy rags.

So what are some of the things that we are doing today that God might see as filthy rags? How about feeding the hungry without Jesus? How about caring for the poor without Jesus? How about finding cures for diseases for our own pride and monetary gain? We think these are great things but the fruit is poison. It is bad fruit. So we come back to our question – can we do anything good apart from Jesus? Yes, if you judge by your measuring stick but absolutely not if you judge by God’s. And in the end, it is not your measuring stick that will be used to judge you – it is God’s.

So we need to remain in Jesus if we want to do anything pleasing to God. And we quickly recognize that remaining in Jesus IS what is pleasing to God. God’s glory is that we show we are Jesus’ disciples. (v8). So how do we do this? We become disciplined in our lives. Sure, there are things we want to do or have in this life. But if it takes priority over what Jesus calls us to do, then we need to put it aside. To remain in Jesus is to obey his commands (v10).

What is Jesus saying here? He is telling us that the most important thing we can do is remain in him. In other words, we need to grow our relationship with him, make him the most important part of our day. We need to keep him in our thoughts day and night. We need to remember that he is always right here with us. That, even though he died 200 thousand years ago, he rose again 3 days later and he has never died again. That he currently lives at the right hand of the Father advocating for us. And that he loves us. That we remain in him is the most important thing we can do.

Then he tells us that in order to remain in him, we need to be disciplined. It is not going to happen just because we want it to. I can desire all I want to keep Jesus in my thoughts day and night, but if I have no discipline, it isn’t going to happen. Discipline is hard, it hurts. That’s the point of the parable. But by disciplining ourselves we can grow closer to Jesus. Our disciplines are all of the spiritual disciplines that we’ve learned over the years – praying, bible study, fellowship, worship. Then there are the harder ones like fasting, sacrificing, frugality, silence, service. All of these things are commands from Jesus. He tells us that we need to do these things. But in this parable, he tells us why we need to do these things – to remain in him. By remaining in him, we are able to bear much fruit.

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Last modified: Aug 2, 2009

The Ark Church - Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, NY - A non-denominational church for Jesus Christ