Christ the True Vine Message #2 “Abiding in the Vine to Bear Fruit” Ed Miller July 27, 2024
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Listen to the audio above while following along with the transcript below which is also available for download at www.biblestudyministriesinc.com
Abiding in the Vine to Produce Fruit
WELCOME AND OPENING PRAYER
As we come to the study of God’s word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable, and that principle is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. The One who inspired this Book is the only One who can unveil Christ in this Book and feed Him to our spirits. All of the scholarship in the world is not going to get you to the heart of God—only the Holy Spirit. That is not saying don’t study; I pray that you’ll study. The greater the scholarship, the clearer is the principle; the clearer the principle, the more is the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if you study only the human side, the Bible says that you will become proud because knowledge puffs up. We need the Lord to show Himself.
There’s a verse in Jeremiah 31:25,
“I satisfy the weary ones, and I refresh everyone who languishes.”
Anybody like that here tonight? Let’s bow…
Our heavenly Father, we once again come, knowing it is not possible for us to work up some attitude of childlikeness and helpless dependence, but we come, Lord, trusting Thee for the miracle of obedience, and we come confessing that we need Your light, Your illumination. Give us the light of the knowledge of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. Show us Him, that we might be changed from one degree of glory to another. We thank You in advance that You are going to meet with us tonight. We know it’s on Your heart to communicate Yourself. We ask, Lord, that no human instrument would be in the way. We pray that You use our meditations and our thoughts, and I pray that You save us all from futility. We ask and claim it in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
REVIEW
Turn please in your Bibles to the gospel of John and chapter 15. It’s a very familiar passage. We’re meditating on that wonderful passage and asking the Lord to grace us by revealing Himself and the burdens that are on His heart. We are meeting three times; we met last night, tonight, and Lord willing tomorrow morning. I don’t expect to give you anything new. You’ve been in this passage, and you’ve basked in it, and you’ve seen the Lord in this passage, but I find it a great privilege in proclaiming again the great verities that are in this passage, just to announce them to you, and I pray it’s in a fresh way.
Last night we looked together at the truth, “I am the true vine.” What did Jesus mean when He called Himself the true vine? Tonight, I’d like us to focus on the truth that by abiding in the true vine we are enabled to bear fruit unto God. Lord willing, tomorrow we want to take the first and the last part of this passage, “My Father is the Husbandman,” and what is that great revelation of God? What does it mean to prune the fruitful branch? What is it that comes from God, that is fruit from God, that He shuts down, that He cuts off? We need to see that. That’s where we are and that’s what we’ll be looking at.
I think it’s important to get the text before our hearts. John 15:1-16:
“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 yourselves to be my disciples.”
“As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commands and remain in His love. I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose 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.”
Last evening I set before your hearts this amazing statement of our Lord Jesus, “I am the true vine.” Just for the sake of review I suggested at least two things that I think God must have intended when He said that. First of all, when He said, “I am the true vine,” He meant, “I am the vine, and you are not the vine. I’m the true vine, and not you; don’t try to be the vine because then you will not be able to produce, in the sense that I’m the source of Life, and you are not the source of Life.” See, Israel had that mindset, God had instructed them that they were the vine, and they didn’t understand what He meant by that. So, when Jesus said this, it was quite a jolt to their thinking, “I am the true vine.”
It’s a very subtle thing, I think, that the enemy tries to do to our thinking. We read a verse like John 15:5,
“Without Me Ye can do nothing.”
We think that means before we’re saved, before we trust the Lord, it’s not possible to do anything. But if you read the context, He’s not talking about before you come to know the Lord. He’s talking about those who are abiding in the vine, united to the vine, and for those who are in Christ, “Without Me you can do nothing,” even for Christians.
I remember when I was wrestling through some of these great truths of God and how puzzled I was, and I remember I used to think this. In my legalistic days I worked my head off in order to earn favor with God, and I thought if I worked hard enough and was involved enough, I would earn blessing and I’d work for it. Then I thought that God finally turned the light on, and I had this other idea. I can’t earn anything by doing something for God; I’ve got to do it because I love Him, and I’ve got to do it out of gratitude for all that He’s done for me. Do you realize, brothers and sisters in Christ, that I don’t have any more ability to perform out of love and out of gratitude than I had when I tried to earn my way and tried to do something to try to appease God?
Let’s say that there was a weight of one thousand pounds or two thousand pounds, and God said, “If you don’t lift two thousand pounds, you can’t go to heaven,” how many of you would try to lift it, and how many of you would succeed? What if God said, “Alright, you know too much; you can’t lift that to go to heaven. Lift it just because you love Me. Lift it because I’ve done so much for you, and your heart is so full of gratitude. Just do it out of gratitude; do it out of love.” Could you do it? It still weighs one or two thousand pounds. We are no more able to perform out of love and gratitude than we are able to perform and minister and earn some kind of favor with God. Nobody bears fruit in any other way than by abiding in the vine. That’s what we’re going to look at tonight.
That was the first thing we saw, that Christ, the true vine, is the vine and you’re not the vine. The second thing is that Christ is the true vine in the sense that He created the vine to picture something, and He’s the reality of all that was pictured by the vine. I won’t go through all of that again, but take a concordance and trace vine, branch, grapes, cluster, and wine through the scriptures and see all that it pictures. Christ is the fullness of that. We suggested that God created organic life, all of life and all of the environment, and life draws from environment, and God made that to be a picture every place you look. “I’m the true vine; I am your element; I am your environment; I am your very existence.” We looked at that yesterday.
ABIDING IN CHRIST TO BRING FORTH FRUIT
That brings us to our second topic, and may God grace us—abiding in Christ in order to bring forth fruit. It’s not possible to read the chapter that we just read or that portion of it, and not see the emphasis on fruit and on abiding. Notice, please, in verse 2, “bear fruit, more fruit,” verse 5, “bears much fruit,” verse 16, “that your fruit should remain.” It’s God’s will that every Christian here bear fruit, more fruit, much fruit, remaining fruit to the glory of God. You see, the grapevine was God’s perfect selection for fruit because the grape, the single grape, is a fruit. But the grape is in a cluster of grapes, and that’s the fruit, and every branch has several clusters of grapes, and every vine has branches, and that’s God’s most prolific picture of fruit—the vine, the grape, the cluster, the branches, the clusters on the branches, and it’s built up in the whole vine. It’s God’s will that we be productive.
Glance at verse 4, “Abide in Me and I in you,” verse 5, “He who abides in Me,” verse 6, “If anyone does not abide in Me,” and verse 7, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you.” This chapter talks about fruit, and this chapter talks about abiding, and the great teaching, the great principle of this chapter is this; the essential condition for all fruit bearing is abiding in Jesus Christ. That is the essential condition, abiding in Christ. Since that’s true, tonight, Lord willing, we’ll touch on what it means to abide and what it means that abiding leads to fruit that is, “…much, more and remains.”
Let me tell you right up front two things we’re not going to look at tonight, because if I were in your place I would expect to hear these two things. You aren’t going to hear them, and so you’re going to say, “Hey, what’s that guy doing? How come he doesn’t mention this and this?” We’re not going to look at the definition of fruit tonight. You need it, and I need it, and we need to see it. We’re going to see it tomorrow. You don’t need to know what it is. So, what we’re going to look at tonight is to abide in Christ to bring forth fruit, whatever that is. You don’t need to know what it is tonight. Whatever it is, I think we all might have different ideas of what it is. It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can’t get it unless you abide in Christ.
The second thing, and it might sound disappointing, but it’s not really because it’ll be suggested. I’m not going to tell you tonight how to abide in Christ. I’m going to give the fact of it, and I’m going to describe it, and when I’m done, you’ll know how, but I’m not going to tell you how because until you see pruning, you won’t really understand the simplicity of how to abide. So, we’re going to see fruit (whatever it is), and we’re going to see abiding (but not tell you how), and we’ll look at the fact of the vine, and I think it will all come together, Lord willing as we go through.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN THAT CHRIST IS THE VINE?
What is included in the great truth of abiding in Jesus Christ? For the sake of those that like logical connection, what does it mean that Christ is the vine? I’d like to set before your heart at least these two things. It’s not possible to have abide if you leave one of these out. There might be more than this, but there are at least these two things. Look again at John 4-5,
“Abide in Me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, and you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in Him, he bears much fruit. Apart from Me you can do nothing.”
That expression at the end, “Apart from Me you can do nothing,” implies, and this is our principle, to abide implies a distrust of self. “Without Me you can do nothing.” Those who have learned to abide have accepted God’s revelation that there is nothing in them that can add to this process of fruit bearing. It’s acknowledging that I’m nothing and there can be no growth, no production, no fruit if I’m the source of that. You might say that’s self-evident. I don’t know how many Christians you know that it’s not self-evident. We can hear it a thousand times and say, “Boy, I believe that,” and then go out and try to be the cause of our own effect, and try to go out and do it on our own. We can say, “There is no fruit without Jesus.”
Satan is clever. In case you didn’t know it, he doesn’t like you. He hates you with a passion. It’s not that he hates you. If somebody wants to hurt me, touch my kid, touch my grandchildren, and they’ve got me. He hates Jesus, so he goes after His kids because that’s the way he can hurt the Lord. If all it said was, “If you abide in Me, you will bear fruit,” Satan can’t deceive you with that; that’s too clear. That’s too simple, and he can’t deceive you, so what he does is he takes the focus off, “No fruit without Jesus.” Christians would be doing great; they’d be having victory all the time. So, what he does is he takes the intermediate step, “Yes, of course there is no fruit without Jesus, but there’s a step in between called “growth”. Did you ever hear that? “You’ve got to grow. And if you’re going to bear fruit, you’ve got to learn to grow in the Lord. Are you involved in all those things that lead to growth?” So, he gets us off target by putting our eyes on growth. “Just abide in Jesus and you’ll bear fruit, but to grow, you better study, you better pray, you better get involved in this program, you better deny yourself, you better get stewardship, you better get your priorities in order, you better understand the principles of discipleship, you better, better, better do this and that,” and the whole thing.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GROW AS THE LILY GROWS?
I have six wonderful children. We gave them many laws and rules through the years, like Galatians, to keep them in protective custody until grace came. So, they had many rules, but of all the rules that we ever gave our children, Lillian and I never told them to grow. Now, we did sarcastically say, “Grow up!” but I’m not talking about that; I’m talking about to grow. There is no command to grow, and there is no counsel that you can give anyone on how to grow. If it’s true that there is no fruit without abiding in Jesus, then there is no growth without abiding in Jesus. The growth that leads to fruit comes the same way the fruit comes; “Except I abide in you, and you abide in Me you will not grow,” you cannot grow. “Except you abide in Me you can’t come to the end of growth, which is fruit.” It’s so important that we understand this. That’s why when Jesus was trying to teach his fretting disciples about growth, He said in Matthew 6:28,
“Consider the lilies of the field and how they grow.”
He didn’t say, “That they grow.” He didn’t say, “Consider the lilies that they’re beautiful.” He said, “Take a look at the lily and how it grows.” In case you didn’t get it, He says,
“…without toil and without spinning.”
Don’t answer—how are you growing? Have you learned what it means to abide in Christ? If I’m going to bring forth fruit, then I’ve got to abide in Christ in such a way that I grow without toil and without spinning like the lily grows. Have you looked into God’s lily manual on how to grow? He tells us how to grow by studying the lily. Any growth in your life or any growth in my life that in any way can be traced back to toil or spinning is unreal, and it will be cut off; it will wither, it will die, and it will be bound in bundles and burned. May God help us as we look at some of these things!
Very few Christians, I fear, have learned to grow as the lily grows. Such a precious picture that is! Very few churches have learned, “…as the lily grows.” Let me describe it for you, because the enemy is subtle in the growth that is not growth, the growth that passes for growth but is not growth. You see, there’s an enlargement, there is an increase, there is an expansion that we call “growth”, and it’s not really growth. Things can get bigger without growing. I’ll give you an example—an icicle that grows, and as that thing freezes and unfreezes it gets longer. We used to pop them off the house and sword fight with them. They get pretty big. That’s called “accretion”, when one thing is piled on top of another thing and another thing—gradual external addition, when dead things come together, and cling, and they begin to grow and grow. We’re in Newport, as you know, on the island, and we’ve got growing sand dunes. They don’t grow like the lily grows. The sand blows up and they get bigger and bigger, “Wow, how that has grown!” Yeah, it grew alright, by accretion.
Did you ever see a crystal? Lillian and I, some time ago, went to Washington, D.C. to the museum. What a place that is, the science museum, and all! She’s into archaeology and Egypt and all that kind of stuff, and relics. That doesn’t turn me on. She was in there and I went in to see the rocks. I went in to see the crystal. Some of those are pretty beautiful. They grow as death piles on death, and it gets bigger and bigger, and more beautiful. Some of those crystals are polished and they look so beautiful. It’s death. Coral is beautiful with so many different colors. Do you know what coral is? It’s nothing more than the skeletons of these little sea creatures. They have lived and they have died, and they crystalize, and they’ve grown into this beautiful coral and great reefs.
I was a coral Christian. I know coral Christians. I know coral assemblies. What a terrible thing is this thing called “growth” when it gets bigger and bigger, but it is not growth, and it’s not like the lily grows. We’re not to grow like the icicle grows or the sand dune grows, or the crystal grows, or the coral grows, or the reef grows. I fear coral Christians because it looks good. You can polish that crystal up and wear it on a chain; that thing is beautiful. There are a lot of people that have death piled on death, and they call it “growth”.
Adding pews and adding buildings and adding people and adding stations and adding resources and adding meetings and adding programs and piling this and that on, they say, “Whoa, what a place that’s growing!” Are they growing, or is it accretion? “Except that you abide in the vine, you cannot grow, and you cannot bear fruit.” All of this expansion that is not growth dishonors the Lord. It might look good, but it’s not growth. If you don’t cut it off, He will; He has to.
What does it mean to abide in the Lord, and to grow as the lily grows? First of all, it implies a distrust of self, and it acknowledges that apart from Jesus Christ I am nothing and I have nothing, and I can do nothing, and I can contribute nothing, and the reality is that my help hinders God. Every time you help God, you hinder Him; every time I help God, I hinder Him. If we could only see the wonder and the simplicity of what He’s trying to say here!
Scholars tell us that the Greek word for “abide” is the word “mano”. It means “to stay”. It means “to remain”— except you abide, except you stay, except you remain. We make everything so hard, and everything is really so simple. You say, “Oh, I’ve got to learn to abide. Abide is so tough; it’s for spiritual hotshots.” The reality is that when you trusted Jesus, you didn’t trust yourself, and you were abiding in the Lord. What does the word mean? It means to stay there. That’s what it means—abide, stay. Right now, you are all abiding in this room, every one of you. Isn’t that easy? Think about it. You can abide here for another forty minutes. Do you know where the problem comes from? It’s when you stop abiding. That’s work. When it’s time to leave, you’ve got to get up and you’ve got to get everything. It takes work to stop abiding. Everybody talks about learning how to abide. The problem is that you learn how not to abide. It was easy to abide because God placed you in Christ Jesus, and He was your environment, and He was your sufficiency, and He was your everything. Stay there! As you receive Christ, so walk in Him. It never gets tougher than it was the first moment you trusted Jesus. You trusted Him and He was everything. Then you stopped abiding. That’s the problem, that we stop abiding. It’s not hard to abide in Christ; it’s to stay where God has put you. He has placed you in Christ Jesus.
Some people get the idea, “Now we’re into the deep, more spiritual walk,” and all that. It’s not deep and it’s not hard and it’s not difficult. Truth is simple because Truth is a Person, and His name is Jesus. That’s what makes it so simple. Some people have this idea that abiding in the Lord for fruit is for spiritual hotshots and some esoteric group of special Christian people who know Hebrew and Greek, and it’s for them. It’s for every branch, and for every Christian. It’s my great joy to announce to you that you do not have to have a theological degree to abide in Jesus, to grow and to bear fruit. You do not have to know some language to abide in Christ. You don’t have to have one thousand years of experience in the deep things of God to abide in Jesus Christ. You need to go back to where you were when you started. You came to the Lord, and you were helpless, and you saw that you had nothing to offer God, and you saw that Jesus was everything. In that moment you were abiding. Somewhere along the line you stopped abiding. Abiding is just coming back to that place where you recognize, “I can do nothing.” God has placed you in Christ.
There’s a second ingredient. Not only does it mean a distrust of self, but here’s the second part, and this is really the Life of it. Abiding in Christ is not only not trusting me, but it’s trusting Him and drawing from Him that Life that is going to produce the fruit. It’s being a partaker of the divine nature; it’s being a partaker of the vine. In Andrew Murray’s wonderful book, “Abiding in Christ”, he makes this comment, “The branch is such only by the Creator’s work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fullness, the fatness, the fruitfulness of the vine is communicated to every branch.” That’s exactly it! In God’s picture when He created organic life, He created life to picture Life, and it’s still called Life, and when you come to the Lord, He gives you Life, but now Life has a name. It’s not just something called “life”, some white substance of protoplasm; it’s not that. That’s just a picture; that’s just the illustration. The vine gives Life the name of that Life; it is the Holy Spirit. That is the Life that comes from us through which we grow and through which we bear fruit; it’s the Holy Spirit of God. Whether you are talking about one grape or a cluster of grapes or the mashing of all the grapes together in community, like the church, whatever you are talking about, the Holy Spirit is the common Life, one Life; the vine only has one Life.
We have a vineyard down the street from where we live. The vineyard owner is not a Christian. So, I had to go to the vineyard; you can’t study this and not go to the vineyard. I went to the vineyard, and I knocked at the keeper’s door, and I said to him, because this is what I thought was the best way to open it, “I am a Christian, and I am studying in my Bible about a vine and the branches. You are a vine keeper. Can you help me? I want to know my God.” I told him right out. He was happy to help me. He thought I was a little strange in my slippers. “The verse that is getting to me is, ‘I am the vine, and you are the branches.’” He looked at me, and I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “The vine doesn’t have branches.” I said, “Wait a minute. A vine doesn’t have branches?” He said, “No, a vine branches, but it doesn’t have branches.” I said, “Ooooh…That’s good!” That’s how one the vine and the branches are—one Life going through that whole thing, one divine Life, one miracle Life, one growing Life, and it’s all the Holy Spirit of God.
It’s important, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we understand the difference between the source of Life and expressions of Life. There are many expressions of Life. In God’s picture in Colossians, He gave the human body, and He gave the head, and the head is Christ. In Colossians 2:19,
“Holding fast the head from which the whole body receives it’s life and it’s held together by joints and ligaments, that it might grow with a growth that is from God.”
I have no life center in my hand. If need be, my hand can be amputated, and I live, because there is no life center there. That’s an expression of life. Every member in my body has one life and not two. And that’s the church. We have one Life: it’s the Life of God, it’s the Life of the Holy Spirit, every member sharing the same Life. Some branches are big branches, some branches are little branches, and some branches are stubby branches. There is not a Christian in here that has more of Jesus than another Christian. We all have the same Life, and that Life is Christ. Now, my branch might be stubby, and your branch might turn one way, and your branch might turn another way, and Harry Alexander’s branch might twist another way. Our branches twist all kinds of ways, but there’s one Life, the Holy Spirit of God. Just as Christ is the head of the church, He is the source of Life.
Did you enjoy last night’s and tonight’s gathering/fellowship? It’s a wonderful expression of Life, but it’s not the source of Life. Christ is the source of Life. Somebody might say, “Oh, what you need in order to grow is a good Christian fellowship.” That’s a good expression of Life, but it’s not the source of Life. You talk about the family altar and quiet time and morning manna, I used to be big on that. I’m talking about being really big, getting up at 3:30 or 4 a.m. Do you know why? It’s because that was my source of Life. I thought that if I didn’t have my devotion, my day was going to cave in, and something was going to go wrong because I didn’t have that devotion. That’s a wonderful expression of Life, but it’s a lousy God; it’s not God; it’s not Christ. Christ is the only source of Life. Quiet time is a wonderful thing and I’m not going to throw it out. I love getting in the word, but it’s not the source. If you are depending upon your quiet time to stay afloat, you better ask God to dawn this on you; you’ve got to learn how to abide in Christ.
You can mention all those other things like Christian service, which is a wonderful expression of Life, but it is not Life. Jesus is Life. Confession of sin is an expression of Life, but it’s not Life. The ordinances that we share are precious expressions of Life, but they are not Life. Spiritual gifts are a wonderful expression of Life, but they are not the source of Life. Only Jesus is the source of Life. If you are having to depend on a Bible conference or a Bible retreat or some special meeting or something like that, you haven’t learned how to abide in the vine. Christ that is in me is the Christ that is in you, is the Christ that is in us. “Every branch in me that abides in me will grow and bear fruit.”
Glance, if you would, at John 6. There’s a precious little verse here on abiding. Our Lord Jesus got to this the day before the cross, John 6:53-55,
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no Life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal Life, and I’ll raise him up on the last day. My flesh is true food, my blood is true drink.”
“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood,” means to drink Jesus. It means to draw from Him, to feed on Him, to devour the Lord Jesus Himself. That’s what it means. When you abide, you don’t trust yourself; you just trust Him, and you just draw from Him. God made all creation to illustrate that.
Do you realize this? God made the plant, the lily, the tree, and the vine in such a way that its communion with the environment was the only issue. What do I mean by that? Jesus said, “Grow how the lily grows.” That’s how to grow. You want to learn? Then, study the lily. They don’t toil and they don’t reap. Study the lily. How does the lily grow? I’ll tell you one thing; it never concerns itself with growth. That’s not an issue with the lily. It’s not an issue with the tree; they don’t worry about growing. They just sort of drink in the sunshine. They put out their little leaves and photosynthesis takes place. God made it that way, sucking it all in and they send out their little roots into the soil. Do you know why? It’s because the Bible says, “Rooted and grounded in Him.” He is your soil, and He is your sunshine, and He is your dew, and He is your rays, and He is your food. What does the plant do? It just drinks and drinks and drinks and drinks and receives and takes in that nourishment. It doesn’t think about growing. The plant doesn’t say, “I wonder how many leaves I’m going to have, and I wonder how many branches I’m going to have and how big they’re going to be. A plant never thinks about growing, and a plant never thinks about fruit. God made organic life. He was so creative. He made those leaves with their little receivers that take in the light. He said, “I think I’m going give variety here. I’m going to make snouts and I’m going make trunks and I’m going to make claws and I’m going to make proboscises. What does organic life do to the environment? It just drinks and takes it in and that’s how we’re to abide in Christ. Don’t trust you. Feed on Jesus; feed on Christ. That’s what it means to abide in Him.
Do you know what’s going to happen when you stop trusting you and start feeding on Jesus? You’ll grow like the lily grows without fretting, without anxiety, without worry. You say, “Well, I’ve got to go hunt down my environment.” No, no. Watch the lily. The environment comes to you; the environment comes to the lily. God gives us lily-Life! God, teach us to grow like the lily grows, and just drink in and draw from the Lord. He’s created this whole universe to teach us. The glory of a grapevine is the grape; the glory of an apple tree is an apple. The glory of a peach tree is the peach. The glory of a fig tree is a fig. The glory of a Christian is his fruit. What is his hope for glory? You know the verse, Colossians 1:27,
“Christ in you, the hope of glory,” the hope of fruit.
What’s my hope to grow? You might say, “I’ve got to study growth.” No, you don’t have to study growth. Run far away from studying growth. Don’t advise people how to grow. Teach them how to abide in the Lord. If they have no trust in themselves, no confidence in the flesh, and they just drink in the Life of the vine, they’re going to grow, and they’re going to produce fruit.
If God dawns that on you, do you realize how much rest is in that? I don’t have to worry about growing; that’s a big part of my life. How am I going to grow? How am I going to get my environment? I don’t have to worry about that, and I don’t have to worry about fruit. All I have to do is drink Jesus. That’s all you have to do from this moment until the time you step into heaven, and then you’ll start drinking Jesus when you see Him as He is. It brings rest and it brings confidence.
Let me wrap it all up by giving you the three New Testament examples of bearing fruit. One is right here in John 5, the vine and the branches, that’s how to bear fruit. The second one we’ve already mentioned and it’s in Colossians 2:19, the head and the body. The third one is in Romans 7:4,
“Therefore, my brethren, you were made to die to the law, that through the body of Christ that you should be married/joined to another, even to Him that rose from the dead,” married to Jesus, and then it says, “that we might bear fruit unto God.”
That’s not my intent; that’s God’s intent; it’s the Holy Spirit’s example. I get upset now that God has begun to dawn this in my heart a little bit. I’m not claiming to have arrived anywhere, but I’ve begun to see a little bit of this side of the wonder of just letting the Life of the Lord flow through you. Seeing gloomy Christians, I just want to shake them. “I’m going through this barren wilderness, having such a hard time, but God is faithful and He’s giving me fruit.” Hearing these kinds of testimonies, where is grace? You don’t understand; you haven’t seen it. You are supposed to be in Christ, in your environment. They don’t understand it. They say, “It’s so hard to bear fruit.”
This is confidential, folks, but I’m going to spread it out there. Lillian and I are fruit bearers. We had six kids, and every one of them came out of a very intimate, precious, sacred union. Don’t tell me it’s hard to bear fruit! We’ve got too many young people here to say too much, but I want you to get the idea because it’s not my idea; it’s God’s idea, and He has set it off to be enjoyable to bear fruit unto God. It’s like this hand is in union with the head and this hand is in union with head, and the head gives life. It’s wonderful! It’s when this hand thinks it has a life of its own and it’s independent and it lives outside of that, that it creates chaos. When the body has one Life, common Life, God’s Life, everything fits together, and they grow together, and they produce together, and it’s marvelous.
Yesterday I shared with you about my son, Daniel, the diver. I want to develop that just a little bit more. For those who weren’t here, the illustration is Christ is our environment. Daniel had taken up diving. So, he dresses up in his suit and his rubber fins and his weight belt and his mask, and he looks so strange because he’s going to an environment where he doesn’t belong. To live in that environment, he has to take this environment with him. So, though he’s below, he lives from an environment above. I gave that part of the illustration yesterday.
When he came home from his first dive, Lillian and I were excited for him. He doesn’t get involved in much. He’s quiet and stays on the side, but he was excited about this. When he came home, we asked, “How did you like it?” “I hate it.” “Why did you hate it? You spent so much money to hate it. You put out two thousand dollars to hate it. Why did you hate it?” “There’s too much pressure down there, and not only that,” he said. “there’s a button on the mask to let water out and I forgot to push it.” He was breathing in water. He said that he kept looking at his tank because he thought he was running out of air, and he was so afraid that he started to hyperventilate. They had to cut the whole class short because he was hyperventilating, and they all had to come up. He said, “I don’t think I’m going to do it anymore.” Do you know why? It’s because he didn’t know how to use the apparatus, because though he was connected, he wasn’t connected because he didn’t understand his environment.
You ought to talk to him now; he loves it! He learned how to breathe. I’m serious; that’s all he learned. He learned how to breathe. He’s telling us all about it and we can’t shut him up now. He loves it! That’s the Christian life. If you learn to breathe, and you learn how to drink, if you learn to take in, and stop doing accretion and piling death upon death thinking that you’re growing, and if you stay out of it and just enjoy Jesus, then you are going to grow and you are going to bear fruit, whatever it is. You are going to bear fruit unto God, and that fruit is going to remain, and God is going to be glorified. May God raise up a people that put no confidence in the flesh, and that just draw from Jesus Christ, and they will grow like the lily grows, Matthew 6:30,
“Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.”
The Christian life is a ball. It’s fun. I know there are those out there telling you it’s not. No, it’s a blast. Get in on it! I’m serious. Get in on it! If you are not abiding in the vine and experiencing Life with a capital L, John 10:10,
“I have come,” Jesus said, “that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.”
May we learn to abide! Let’s bow.
Our Father, we thank You for Your word, Your precious word. We pray that it would not just be precepts, but that You would indeed teach us how to grow with the growth that is from God. Teach us how to hold fast to the head, and how to drink from our Lord Jesus, and how to grow Life, how to be filled with the Spirit of God. Thank you for our Life, thank you for our Life in common, thank you that we all have the same Life, and thank You that You’ve place us in Christ and have only commanded us to stay there. Teach us to abide that we might grow and bear fruit for You. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
