Sermons

I’ll be preaching from the Gospel of John Chapter 15, verses 1–6, so please open your Bibles to that wonderful gospel…

 

My Sermon Title on this Passage is: Examine Your Lifeline!

 

Let’s Pray for our time ahead!  ….Heavenly Father, I pray that our message time would be fruitful as we open your perfect Word. I pray this would be your message to those assembled, and by the power of your Spirit, hearts would be open to receiving Holy Scripture. Lord this message is lifted up to you as an act of love, obedience, and worship, and I pray that I would neither add to, nor take anything away from your perfect truth for us…..in Jesus name, Amen

 

Introduction:

 

Almost 80 years have passed since World War II engulfed the globe. There is a story from that incredible time in world history that I want to lead with this morning……..

 

After the famous Normandy invasion of June 1944, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army undertook a march across France and Belgium, battling Hitler’s retreating forces.

 

After taking the beaches of Normandy, France, the allied armies had to organize and advance over land against stiff German resistance with their objective being Berlin….

 

 

…..they had to get to Berlin to once and for all end Adolf Hitler and the scourge of his fascist, Nazi, regime that had spawned a global war….. and terrible devastation in Europe in particular…..where there had been years of fiery conflict, suffering, and death.

 

General Patton was known for his aggressive leadership and he drove his troops hard to move as fast as they could while pressing the enemy. But the fast-moving army was forced to halt at one point because of a dangerous fuel shortage.

 

Patton’s fuel allocation fell 100,000 gallons short of what was needed to sustain onward movement.

 

In the Academy Award winning movie about General Patton….appropriately called “Patton”…. there is a tragic scene where a battalion of American Third Army tanks are driving in battle formation across an open meadow in the French farmlands.

 

The movie scene is dramatic…..you hear the roar of tank engines and you see the powerful war machines ominously rolling as darkness falls.

 

And then, one-by-one their engines die…..because they are out of fuel.  As the engines die, the tanks stop in their tracks……. and what were moments ago formidable war machines with firepower and maneuver abilities, these American tanks quickly become sitting ducks that eventually cannot even fire their cannons because without a running engine, the tank’s batteries die and soon none of the electrical systems needed to accomplish the tank’s basic functions can operate.

 

The Germans in the area are quick to understand the American predicament and they press for tactical advantage.

 

A terrible scene ensues. The American tanks fight on in superior numbers until their batteries die, only able to fire a few times, and then the fighting descends into man-on-man hand-to-hand combat. The outcome is grim in terms of the battalion’s losses.

 

Tragically, this was not supposed to happen as it did. Tanks are not supposed to run out of gas in combat. But in this case, the men, in their war-fighting tanks, had their supply lines cut, as it were.

 

The cause was a logistics failure, which is not uncommon in war, but we want to focus today on the result……they lost the fuel lifeline necessary for life and success in a terrible war zone.

 

Our passage for study this morning has some parallels…..Christians live every day in a terrible temporal war zone. We’re fighting an unholy trinity of the world, the flesh, and the devil…..and the stakes are eternity……we need a lifeline, we need a power source that is necessary for temporal life and success as well as eternal security. With that idea as a lead in, let me read now from the Gospel text, John, verses 1 through 6:

 

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

 

These are, of course, Christ’s words, and these are being spoken to His disciples in the last hours leading up to Jesus’ betrayal and arrest….which we know leads to His horrific crucifixion

 

Jesus had a lot to say to the disciples in this dramatic time of anticipation, and all of it has been written down for us in Chapters 14-17 of John’s gospel…….and the sum of this narration has been called The Farewell Discourse.

 

Jesus was headed to the cross, and so our Lord was endeavoring to bolster and reassure his disciples … “let not your hearts be troubled,” he told them…. “I go and prepare a place for you,” ….. “I will come again and take you to myself” …. He also assured them…

 

These were intended as words of comfort, but not a release from His calling on them to navigate a very tough road ahead.

 

Jesus, their teacher, mentor, Lord, and friend….. was telling them that He had to die….that their world was about to be completely and permanently upended…..and they struggled to absorb what He was saying….

 

But Hear this! There can be no salvation without the cross….no Christianity without a crucified Christ! Jesus knew this, of course, but these men were only beginning to comprehend…..

 

So, with the comfort he was offering His beloved disciples, came bold teaching on the critical truths these men would need to go forward…. through the awful first days ahead…..

 

…..but then later throughout the amazing mission he had for them after His resurrection and ascension….that of advancing the Gospel, the New Covenant of Grace, first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles…..

 

These disciples were to become the Apostles who would be the very foundation of the church, our church, Christ’s church of which we benefit from today….

 

As the men were forced to accept the shocking and fear-filled thought of Jesus setting His face to Jerusalem, and then through Jerusalem to the scornful cross, they were wondering how things would be without Him…..

 

Jesus promised them the Holy Spirit in Chapter 14 … but while he was yet with them, He stayed on message….. that they would have to continue to have faith….to trust….and in drawing from their faith and trust, they were to obey….they were to obey along an arduous, suffering-filled journey ahead.

 

So, Chapter 15 opens, and we find our passage for today, continuing the themes of Chapter 14…..themes of the Farewell Discourse

 

And Jesus is using a word picture…an analogy….to make a binary claim about the human condition….to make both a temporal……and an eternal……life-and-death proclamation…..

 

As John MacArthur puts it:

“The drama that unfolds in this analogy is simple: there is a vine, there is a vinedresser, and there are two kinds of branches – branches that bear fruit and are pruned to bear more fruit; branches that don’t bear fruit, cut off, dried, burned – that simple.”

 

The branch connected to God represents a path of Life…the other, a path to death.

 

PNP: If you are taking notes, I want to show you that John 15:1–6 contains Five Essential Truths about your necessary lifeline to God—called union with Christ—that you need to examine in order to confirm your salvation:

 

1. Jesus Christ is the True Vine
2. God the Father is the Vinedresser

• Fruitless Branches are Removed

1. Fruitful Branches are Pruned
2. Abiding Branches are Fruitful Branches

 

So, let’s go right to essential truth #1: Jesus is the True Vine

 

Verse one begins with “I AM” the true vine…This is the last of SEVEN  “I AM” statements in the whole of the gospel of John…..and John is the only gospel that contains all seven of Christ’s I AM statements…..

 

The other six are:

 

I AM the bread of life (John 6:35); I AM the light of the world (John 8:12); I AM the door (John 10:9); I AM good shepherd (10:11); I AM the resurrection and the life (John 11:25); and I AM the Way the Truth and the Life (John 14:6)…..

 

Understanding each of these “I am” proclamations moves us deeper in our understanding of Jesus’ identity and his essential role in the salvation plan for mankind…

…….the plan that began in the Garden, with both curse and promise……as narrated in Genesis 3:15.  Remember God’s pronouncement? “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”  The head-bruiser is Jesus….the heel-bruiser is Satan…..

 

Jesus’ I AM declarations link Him to the Old Testament revelation of God.

In Exodus, God revealed His name to Moses: “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).

 

Thus, in all of the Old Testament and Hebrew tradition, “I AM” is unquestionably understood as a name for God, so make no mistake, whenever Jesus made an “I AM” statement in which He claimed attributes of deity, He was identifying Himself as God!

 

So, in verse one, Jesus…eternal God…the Second Member of the Trinity, possessing all the attributes of God articulated throughout inspired Scripture, is telling the disciples that He is the True Vine.

 

This very important in light of the fact that the central theme of John’s gospel is that Jesus is the promised Messiah and Son of God. By believing in Him people can have eternal life!

Remember how the Gospel of John opens up? Let’s look at John 1, verses 1-4:

 

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴ In him was life,^[a] and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

And then further down in verse 14: ¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”

 

So Jesus is God

 

…….and As the Second Member of the marvelous and utterly supernatural and divine Trinity……Jesus voluntarily condescended to become flesh, so he could walk among men and take our place on the wretched cross to pay in full the penalty for our sins. We embrace this gift of grace by faith…..by faith alone!

 

So….. considering what we know about the grace of the Gospel, What does Jesus, mean by this I AM the true vine language? Why not I Am the vine….why the qualifying “true vine?”

 

 

The vine reference would have meant a lot to the disciples because the Old Testament frequently refers to Israel…..God’s Covenant people……as being a vine that God planted.

 

The disciples probably recited Psalm 80 where in verses 8-9 the Psalmist says to God, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.” They knew how God brought Israel out of Egypt and planted it in the promised land.

 

They would have been familiar with the Hebrew prophets who likened Israel to a vine or vineyard. They would know the words of Isaiah and Hosea who said that “The vineyard of the Lord almighty is the house of Israel” (Isaiah 5:7) and “Israel was a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit” (Hosea 10:1).

 

The grapevine was a symbol of national life, and in fact it was so precious a symbol that a huge, gold grapevine decorated the gates of the temple in Jerusalem.

 

The disciples would also have known the up and down history of Israel and her corporate failure to be the vine that God intended….

 

…..so Jesus’ “I AM the true vine” declaration was profound.

 

In fact, it was a bit of a “mike drop” moment….Bible commentator Kent Hughes said it this way: “All conversation must have stopped at this powerful pronouncement. The force of His Jesus’s words were, “You all know how Israel is pictured as a vine that is meant to produce refreshing fruit. Well, I am the fulfillment of all that symbol suggests.”

 

The vine demonstrates Jesus’ identification. When Jesus says “I am the true vine” He is really saying, “I am the true Israel.” Where Israel failed, Jesus succeeds….He is the salvation of men”

 

He is saying that He is the embodiment of all that Israel should have been. But, of course, Israel did not faithfully execute her mission as God’s representative.

 

She failed to be a Kingdom of Priests and a Holy nation. Her idolatry and sins and lack of repentance prevented her from being a faithful witness.

 

Jesus said, “I am the True Vine” to his closest friends gathered around Him.

 

The timing of this pronouncement is important because it was only a short time before Judas would betray Him….

 

……in fact, Judas had already left to do his infamous deed (John 13:30), so the betrayer did not hear Jesus make this proclamation….an interesting foreshadowing of Judas’ fate as an apostate….someone who looked the part and said the right things, but was never a true follower…and he would become a branch cut off.

 

So, Jesus was preparing the eleven faithful men remaining for His pending crucifixion, His resurrection, His subsequent departure for heaven, and their mission to build His church.

Jesus wanted His friends, not only those eleven, but those of all time, to know that He was not going to desert them, even though they would no longer enjoy His physical presence.

 

So if Jesus is the True Vine….let’s now look at the function of a vine…

 

A vine to a grape branch provides living energy—so Jesus, the Spiritual vine provides His living energy….His spiritual life reality

 

He is telling His beloved disciples that He would continue to nourish and sustain them just as the roots and trunk of a grape vine produce the energy that nourishes and sustains its branches while they develop their fruit.

 

Jesus wanted his disciples then, and He wants His believers today in Anchorage, AK…..to know that, even though we cannot see Him, we are in union with Him….we are as closely connected to Him as the branches of a vine are connected to its stem.

 

There is One way, One vine and its Jesus Christ!

 

Our desire to know and love Him, along with the energy to serve Him will keep flowing into and through us as long as we “abide” in Him.

 

We’ll come back to this idea of “abiding” in a few minutes, but I want to turn now to vinedresser.

The second essential truth to embrace as you examine your salvation is this: The Father is the Vinedresser:

 

Look now at the second part of verse 1: “my Father is the vinedresser..”

So, in the word picture, the Father is portrayed as the vinedresser….the wholly invested caretaker who is able and intentional…..who is working to sustain and grow a heathy, living vine and branches…..

 

and, who will ….in perfect inter-Trinitarian knowledge and awareness…. Discern a healthy branch as compared to an unhealthy branch.

 

It makes total sense that a flourishing, high-producing vine requires a caretaker who will sovereignly do what is necessary to produce the best results, doesn’t it?

 

 

And what are the results He, God the father, the Vinedresser,  is looking for within the context of the analogy?

 

…..Vine branch “health,” is measured in fruit production and in verse 2, we see that “every branch that does not bear fruit, he takes away,” …. which means he cuts it off and disposes of it.

 

And this hard reality is critical truth #3: Fruitless branches are removed!

 

And the method of disposal is found down in verse 6: “⁶ If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.”

 

I know this sort of language is offensive to the culture at large, and perhaps for too many within the church…. That it is zero-sum, as the saying goes….but Jesus Himself is giving a clear picture of judgement….of permanent destruction…..of eternal separation from life-giving connection, of endless torment if a person is not found abiding in Him.

 

So went Judas, and so remains the fate of every unbeliever who do not come by faith into an authentic abiding relationship with Christ. We must examine our salvation to ensure it is authentic!

 

Too many people claim Christ but are not in fact His….the supernatural union with Him is not there….true conversion has not happened.

 

Frankly, I would assert there is no more terrifying words spoken by Jesus that these found in Matthew 7:21–23:

 

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

 

So, if fruitless branches are removed, what about those producing fruit?

 

Which brings us to essential truth #4…..Fruitful branches are pruned

 

The Vinedresser takes a different approach toward the healthy branches. Verse 2 continues: “and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

 

Well….pruning is done with a knife folks….a sharp knife, handled with surgical precision….and such surgery implies pain, and moreover, its pain-producing purpose is to produce more and better fruit!

 

The professionals that tend vineyards for a living know how important the pruning principle is….as do you green thumb types out there….

 

I do not have a green thumb…my wife Cynthia would probably be happy to divulge my inability to care for plants and also my complete lack of any handiness talent….she is probably picturing me pathetically watching YouTube videos about how to take care of some roses we have in our back yard….none of that went well…….

 

But those best results the professionals aspire to, do require the cut of the pruning knife.

 

Do not miss the principle here!!!….there is a good and loving purpose in our pruning, so to say…our spiritual pruning, which implies some sanctified suffering ….

 

Sometimes our pain is the result of our sins. Sin brings consequences…..Other times pain comes because we are bearing fruit and God simply wants us to bear more.

 

Nevertheless, the results of God’s pruning will ultimately be beneficial for us…….and for his grander purposes…..and ultimately, for His glory.

 

Malcolm Muggeridge in his book Jesus Rediscovered said this about the pruning principle:

 

“Suppose you eliminated suffering, what a dreadful place the world would be. I would almost rather eliminate happiness. The world would be the most ghastly place because everything that corrects the tendency of this unspeakable little creature, man, to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He’s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered.”

 

James 1:2 says to the authentic Chrsitain: “² Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, ³ for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. ⁴ And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

 

I’d say this is a pretty timely word under our current cultural circumstances, wouldn’t you?

 

One more thing about pruning….we cannot prune ourselves….and even if we could, we wouldn’t remove what really has to go….

 

One writer made this Same point saying: “The truth is, what is noble and attractive in us has to come from the cutting we would have avoided.”

 

David, in Psalm 119 said this in verse 67: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your Word.” And in verse 71 he said: “It is good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your decrees.”

 

Pruning creates a hunger for truth and truth is found where??……in God’s Word!……. The end of the Apostolic era of the first century brought the closed canon of Holy Scripture…….and we have now, just as every believer since the first century, His Word, which is inerrant and sufficient for ALL life and doctrine!

 

It has been said that God’s hand is never closer than when he prunes the vine….take heart in ongoing pruning blessed ones!

 

So how do we respond to these first four essential truths? Is there a command to follow? Is there some measure of success to consider?

 

Well essential truth #5 is this: Fruitful Branches are Abiding Branches, so let’s look now at the idea of abiding in Jesus and then, what good fruit looks like.

 

Jesus said this in Verses 4 and 5:  “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

 

The word “abide” comes from the Greek verb μενο, which basically means to “remain in,” “stay with,” or “reside with.”

 

These meanings imply a close living relationship with Jesus that the disciples clearly enjoyed during the Lord’s earthly ministry. They walked with Him. He was in their midst. However, the timing of His encouragements to “stay with” Him, in this moment that He spoke these words, was clearly at odds with what was to transpire in the coming days.

 

Jesus would very soon be tortured and killed, making it impossible for the disciples to “stay with” Him in any physical or temporal sense. So, what was Jesus getting at here in commanding them to “abide in Him?”

 

He was expressing the concept of a vital spiritual union that our Triune God makes supernaturally possible between Christians and Jesus Christ.

 

And this vital union is made possible by the indwelling of the Third member of the Trinity—God the Holy Spirit….which is the promise of the New Covenant of Grace!

 

We are talking about SAVING FAITH …..And the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is gift of grace that is a critical part of the reality of Saving Faith….

 

And we know that SAVING FAITH is a sovereign work of our Triune God……acting in perfect unity as Father, Son, and Spirit to call us by faith alone, in the birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of the God-man Jesus Christ alone …. hold that thought for a moment as we consider what healthy abiding looks like….

 

The reality of our salvation means that Every Christian remains inseparably connected to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in all areas of life.

 

Believers depend on our union with Him for the grace and the strength to obey.

 

We look obediently to His Word for instruction on how to live.

 

We offer Him our deepest adoration and praise in sincere worship, and we submit ourselves to His authority.

 

In sum, Christians gratefully know Jesus Christ…..through His finished atoning work…..is the source and sustainer of our lives here on earth and for all eternity. He is the True Vine!

 

And hear this! Abiding in Christ actually evidences authentic salvation, genuine SAVING FAITH.

 

The Apostle John in his first of three epistles penned late in his life, alluded to inauthentic salvation when he referred to defected professors of the faith:

 

 “they went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19).

 

People with genuine, real, authentic SAVING FAITH will remain….they will meno….they will abide….they won’t defect; they won’t deny Christ or abandon His truth.

 

This is because they simply cannot “not abide!” Let me say that again!  Believers cannot “not abide!”……  God does the work of salvation and our conversion comes from outside of us….we respond in faith to the heart work God is already doing….

 

And Jesus reiterated the importance of abiding as a sign of real faith when He said, “If you abide in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine” (John 8:31)

 

And abiding produces visible fruit…..which is also evidence of the work God has done by His amazing grace!  

 

Jesus said that no branch can even live, let alone produce leaves and fruit, by itself. Cut off from the trunk, a branch is dead. Just as a vine’s branches rely on being connected to the trunk from which they receive their energy to bear fruit, Jesus’ disciples are to depend on being connected to Him for their spiritual life and the ability to serve Him effectively.

 

The fruit the believer is designed to produce is that of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

 

A spirit-saturated life will produce edifying works for the Kingdom of God!

 

Our source of life and spiritual fruit is not in ourselves; it is outside us, in Christ Jesus.

 

We can live, live rightly, and serve Him effectively only if we are rightly connected to Him in a faith and love relationship borne of our salvation….which again, comes by ONLY by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone….

 

…..abiding is the result of authentic salvation wherein a person is both sealed with the Holy Spirit, and indwelled with the Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 1:21–22 puts it this way: “²¹ And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, ²² and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee!”

Jesus underscored this truth strongly by saying in verse 5 of our text today, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

 

 

 

 

 

 

One writer drove this point home with: “This illustration of the vine and branches is no thoughtless generality or careless simile. It is absolute, stark reality. No believer can achieve anything of spiritual value independently of Christ Jesus.”

 

All true branches bear fruit. This is why Jesus tells us in Matthew 7: 16–20: “By their fruit you will know them”

 

As we heard…….Those who do not produce good fruit are cut away and burned. Again, the reference is to apostates, unbelievers, those who profess to know Christ but whose relationship to Him is insincere, bogus, illegitimate, unreal.

 

God neither called them nor elected them nor saved them nor sustains them. Eventually, the fruitless branches are identified as not belonging to the Vine and are removed for the sake of truth and the benefit of the other branches.

 

This text, this morning, very simply expresses the fundamental binary reality of life for every created human being:

 

We are either saved by God   

or we are lost …..

Our soul is either right with God   

or our soul is warring against God

We are either at peace with God

or we are separated from Him.

We are either counted righteous in His sight

or we are due His Holy wrath.

We are either graced with eternal life in fellowship with Him, or we are headed, like Satan and his demons, to never-ending punishment.

We are either considered a royal family member of the King,

or we are an enemy of the crown.

So, we are to examine our lifeline! We must have SAVING FAITH and…. once regenerate by God’s gracious power…..

 

…..depend on Jesus for everything, starting with our very life—“For in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)—and including our reconciliation with God through Him.

 

No one can serve God effectively until he is in union with Jesus Christ by faith. Jesus is our only connection with the God who gave life and who produces in us a fruitful life of righteousness and service.

 

The remainder of John Chapter 15 explains some outcomes, or results, of an abiding relationship with Christ:

 

• God will be glorified in it, verse 8
• We can ask for help, in prayer, and He will hear us and answer in keeping with his will, verse 7
• We’ll want to obey, and we will obey by “keeping His commandments,” ….. which inspires love, transcendent love, verses 10, 12, and 13
• Such love is seen in the willingness to lay down our lives for one another, just as He laid down His life for us.
• We’ll also see the world hate us…..verses 18–25

 

Then verse 26 of John 15 …. The very last verse of the Chapter…..brings the narrative back to the time and place Jesus said these things to his faithful eleven….we’re back into the profound moment ….Jesus has yet to face the cross, He has yet to suffer and die, He has yet to reappear in the miraculous resurrection, and He has yet to ascend…..but it is very interesting that he promises them the Holy Spirit after giving them this last and final “I AM:”

 

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.”

 

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have proved perfect unity in all things, but most critically, in the sovereign plan for your salvation.

 

There was Godhead unity in the garden to save us, there was unity in all plans and purposes with the Patriarchs and the Nation of Israel, there was awesome unity in Christ’s condescension and passion, and there has been unity in the church age leading to now.

 

If God has indeed saved you, you can Listen to the Spirit that is in you, Saints! Walk by the Spirit…choose to do what you now know to be right and true! Choose holiness over everything else…..this is how we abide in Christ in the here and now. He guarantees our connection. We bear fruit because we now desire to bear fruit.

 

I’ll quote John MacArthur again as we’re about to end. He said this about Obedience to the command to be filled with the Spirit found in Ephesians 5:18

 

 “to be filled with the Spirit is to is to be under His total domination and control…… It requires the death of selfishness and the slaying of self will….to be filled with God’s Spirit is to be filled with His Word. And as we are filled with His Word, it controls our thinking and action.”

 

Although it may seem like it will never come……We will soon enough see Spring return to our wintery state. I am ever amazed at the transformation that occurs when our planet moves on its annual orbit around the sun to bring on a season of growing warmth, new life, more light…..

 

My wife, Cynthia, because she has the green thumb that I do not have……has planted some wonderful perennial flowers in our front yead that quite amazingly come back year-after-year even after being buried under many feet of snow and ice.

 

We’ll start to see colorful purple and yellow flowers pop up in late April even before the grass starts to turn green again…..But one thing I have learned about these little flowers is not to step on them…..sometimes I will clumsily start cleaning beds and removing and replacing mulch and such things, and whenever I accidentally bump a little flower and cut its stalk that connects to its roots, it dies and withers quite quickly. There is just no possibility of life after a severed stem…..and what was a beautiful symbol of life and a future renewed becomes a picture of death and no future.

 

We should examine our salvation….Are we fooling ourselves or are we authentically His, abiding daily in Him?

 

Is Jesus your True Vine?

Is the Father your Vinedresser?

Are you Bearing the Fruit of the Holy Spirit?

Are you growing more Christlike under the New Covenant of Grace?

 

Perhaps God is doing the heart surgery you need right now by His grace to be once and for all authentically saved!

 

Let’s Pray…..