John 15:1-8, Got Fruit?

John 15:1-8
Got Fruit?

“Got Milk?” I love those commercials. You know the ones where they guy eats a bunch of cookies and cake and then he starts to look for something to drink. And then he starts to panic because he can’t find something to drink. And after he is about to freak out the commercial cuts and asks, “Got Milk?”

The question is a little different for us today. As Christians we don’t ask if we’ve got milk, but, we should ask ourselves if we’ve, “Got Fruit”. I’m not talking about fruit in the fridge at home, or, fruit as a regular part of a healthy, balanced diet. I’m talking about spiritual fruit in the Christian life. It’s the spiritual fruit that comes from being a Christian. It’s the fruits that grow out of the life of someone who is connected to the True Vine, the Lord Jesus Christ.

In chapter 15 Jesus uses another metaphor. He uses the metaphor of a vine. He says that He is the vine. He says that His Father is the Gardener, or Vinedresser. And He says that we are the branches of the vine. The question today is, “Do you ‘Got Fruit’?” The Lord Jesus Christ speaks of bearing fruit as a natural and expected result of being saved. So, it is critical for us to ask ourselves today if we’ve ‘Got Fruit?’

I want to look at 5 Facts of Fruitful Christians today.

Fruitful Christians … (v1)
First, Fruitful Christians Recognize Christ is their Vine. Jesus says in verse 1, “I am the True Vine”. This is the 7th of Jesus’ “I Am” statements in John’s Gospel (Bread of Life, Light of the World, Gate for the sheep, Good Shepherd, Resurrection and the Life, the Way the Truth and the Life).

Now Jesus says to them, “I am the True Vine”. He often used metaphors that were inspired from His surroundings to teach some great truth about Himself. Growing vines was very common in Palestinian life and would have been a concept very familiar to the disciples. Remember that Jesus had taken the 11 disciples and left the upper room. They were making their way to the garden of Gethsemane. On their way they would have seen several things that could have inspired Jesus to use this metaphor. One was the great golden vine on front of the temple, which was the symbol for Israel.

In the OT Israel was called a vine; the nation was God’s choice vine. In Psalm 80:8 it says, “You brought a vine ought of Egypt; you drove out nations and planted it.” In Hosea 10:1 it says, “Israel was a spreading vine”. The vine actually became the symbol for the nation of Israel. Israel was God’s choice vine and He cared for His vine and gave it every privilege and advantage so that it would be fruitful.

But instead, Israel failed to produce fruit for God. God says to the nation in Jeremiah 2:21, “I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and rliable stock. How then did you turn against me into a corrupt, wild vine?” The OT is a testimony of the spiritual fruitlessness of God’s vine, the nation of Israel.

But they were not the true Vine. God has a True Vine. Jesus Christ is the True Vine. The Greek word for “true” means “original”. Jesus is the original vine, the only real and genuine vine. He is not a copy or imitation. (Illustration Needed). It’s as if Jesus was saying “You think that because you belong to the nation of Israel you are a branch of the true vine of God. But the nation is a degenerate vine. I am the true vine. The fact that you are Jews, and a part of the nation of Israel, will not save you. The only thing that can save you is to be a part of Me. I am the vine of God and you must be branches joined to Me.”

Fruitful Christians recognize Jesus is the True Vine

Fruitful Christians are Cut (v2)
Secondly, Fruitful Christians are Cut. Notice verses 1-2, “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.”

In this verse Jesus says there are two kinds of branches. There are branches that bear fruit, and, there are branches that don’t bear fruit. Branches that do not bear fruit will be purged from the Vine, whereas branches that do bear fruit will be cut, or, pruned, in order to bear more fruit.

The first thing to notice about this pruning process is that God is the Gardener. He does the pruning. The Gardener, or Vinedresser, in Palestinian life was in charge of caring for the vines. And much of that care came by the pruning process.

The Gardener prunes in two ways. First he cuts away dead wood. He takes away from the vine the things that are dead, the dead things that get in the way of growing life - the dead things that hold back growth.

The other day I was talking to a guy who is a forester. His job is to manage the population of trees on a piece of land. Someone hires him to come out and look at their land and to plan how to make their woods a more healthy and productive woods. By healthy and productive he means that he makes the land produce more of healthy, quality trees.

He was explaining to me that he would leave certain high quality and expensive trees in the woods. But, he would clear out all the trees that were dead, deformed, diseased or decaying. He says you don’t want trees like that taking up space in the woods. Not only do they take up space where healthy trees could grow, they block sunlight from getting into spaces where other healthy trees could grow. This guy manages forests by pruning them to make them produce more healthy trees.

That’s what God does as the Gardener. Sometimes we’ve got too much dead stuff from our old life in our new life. And those dead parts of our life get removed by the Gardener. They’re the dead parts that don’t look like Christ; they are a parts of the old dead life we left behind and they need to be pruned in order to make room for new things that Christ is growing in us. If they’re not removed, then they keep us from growing; they keep us from becoming more fruitful Christians. God wants fruitful Christians so you can be sure that if you’re a true branch, a true believer, you will be pruned. God is the Gardener.

Secondly, he cuts away living parts so that the vine does not grow too big. If it grows too big then there will be long rambling branches and the quality of the crop will not be as good. The strength supplied from the vine will be wasted on growing large branches and not the growing of fruit. That’s a case where there’s more branch than fruit. Pruning corrects this and makes the vine healthy and productive.

This is so important that the skill of pruning is the most important part of being a gardener. The gardener must be carefully trained or he can ruin an entire crop. Some vineyards invest 2-3 years of training new Gardeners to teach them where to cut, how much to cut, and even what angle to cut.

Fruit is the goal. The vine is absolutely worthless for anything else. The wood is no good for fuel as it burns too quickly. It was too soft to be used for building anything. The Jewish law required that at certain times of the year people had to bring wood offerings to the Temple. This wood would be used in the fires on the altars. But the law said that the wood from the vine could not be brought. That wood was not to be used in the Temple.

The point is that the only thing a vine was good for was producing fruit. If the branches of the vine didn’t produce, they were worthless. The pruning process makes the branches of the vine bear much fruit. And sometimes, in that pruning process, a gardener has to cut away whole bunches of grapes so that the rest of the crop will be of higher quality.

So God is the Gardener, and second, Growth is the purpose for pruning. If a branch is bearing fruit, God prunes it in order to cause more fruit to grow. Notice that there is a progression here in our passage. Jesus speaks of branches with No Fruit (2), Some Fruit (2), and More Fruit all in verse 2. Then, in verses 5 and 8 He is talking about branches producing Much Fruit. God prunes (cuts) so that we grow. He wants to see fruit in us and He works to get fruit from us.

Well what kinds of fruit do we produce? The Bible speaks of different types of fruit and we can expect to see these in our lives as we grow in Christ.
First there is the fruit of winning souls to salvation. In Romans 1:13 it says, “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among other Gentiles.”

Second, are the Fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5, “Love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” These are Christ-like character qualities that develop in the lives of believers who are yielded to the Spirit.

A third kind of fruit is a holy and obedient life. Romans 6:22 says, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.”

Giving is another fruit that comes from a mature Christian life. Romans 15:28 Paul says about the financial gift he was transporting, “So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way.”

Colossians 1:10 says that fruit comes out of our good deeds as Christians. “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God”

And finally Hebrews 13:15 says that praises to God that come from our hearts off our lips are a fruit, “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess His Name.”

These are the kinds of fruit that God wants to grow in our lives. These are the kinds of fruit He is working to grow in your life. Fruitful Christians are Cut, pruned, to cause them to grow.

Fruitful Christians are Clean (v3)
Thirdly, Fruitful Christians are Clean. In verse 3 the Lord says, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.”

Jesus tells them that they are already clean. He said this back in chapter 13 when He was washing their feet. In verse 10 He said, “You are clean, though not every one of you.” All of them were already clean except for one of them. He was talking about Judas. Judas was the one among them who was not clean. Judas was an example of a branch that bore no fruit because He was never truly joined to the True Vine.

The rest of them were clean because of the word that Jesus spoke. Anyone who accepts the words of the Lord Jesus Christ will be cleansed from their sins. He is the One who according to Hebrews chapter 1 “provided purification for sins”. It’s not by good works that you can cleanse your guilt. It’s not by religion that you can wipe away your shame. It’s not by anything that you do that you are made clean. It is only by the word of God that you are cleansed.

How many people today need to hear that? How many need the cleansing power of God’s Word to wash them, bathe them, and make them sparkling clean. You might be here today and think that you could never be clean. But, the word of God can make you clean. And whatever you have done, whatever you think could never be forgiven, can be washed away by the word of God. It and it alone has that kind of power and you can experience that by believing the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Until you are clean, you can never produce fruit. The moment you are made clean is the moment that you trust in Jesus Christ. It is also at that moment that you become joined to Him forever. He becomes your True Vine and you become a branch in Him. And when His life and His strength are supplied to you then you can begin to bear fruit.
Fruitful Christians are Cleansed of their sins

Fruitful Christians Continue in Christ (4,5)
Fourthly, Fruitful Christians Continue in Christ. Notice verses 4-5, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Five times in these 2 verses Jesus says “remain”. If you’re reading another translation it might say, “abide.” Remain is the Greek word, “meno”. It occurs 11 times in this chapter, 40 times in the entire Gospel, and another 27 times in John’s other letters. This is a very important theme in John’s writings. But what does it mean to remain? It means to continue or to abide, or to stay. We see this same word in other places in John’s writings:

In 1 John 4:15 it says, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.” (Lives in is the same Greek word)
In 1 John 3:23-23 it says, “And this is His command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave to us.” (Lives in us is the same Greek word)

Remaining in Christ means to obey Him in two things: First, you have to believe in His name for salvation. Second, you have to obey His command to love one another as He loved you. This is a growing lifestyle of loving others the way that you have been loved by Christ. This loving fellowship with other believers both comes from and produces a fellowship with Christ where His life works in and through you to produce fruit. You have to be yielded to His command to love in order to produce fruit.

The only people who abide in Christ are those who are truly saved. The context here does not imply that people can lose their salvation if they don’t abide. That would contradict other clear passages that speak of our eternal security. It’s not possible to cross over from death to life and then back again to death. Once you’ve truly crossed over to life by faith in Jesus Christ, you are there for good.

Abiding is a word that encompasses believing in Jesus for salvation and truly being cleansed of your sins. But this faith at the beginning is the kind of faith that continues and leads to a growing Christian life where more and more fruit grows. Spirit produced fruit will go on reproducing from one life to another. From fruit, to more fruit, to much fruit.

Man can imitate that, but, man-made false fruit is Sure there will be people who look like they’re saved, that’s why their called tares. They look like wheat, but they’re not. That’s why the Bible says to look closely at such men because they look so much like the real thing, but, they’re not real.

In other words, the branches that bear no fruit whatsoever are branches that were never joined to Christ in the first place.


Fruitful Christians have Confidence that their Prayers are Answered (7)
In verse 7 we see the Confidence that Fruitful Christians have that their prayers will be answered. Read verse

This is because when we remain in Christ and His word remains in us, His words condition and control our minds so that our prayers conform to His will. We can pray then in accordance with His will. We can know that our prayers are heard and heard in a way that they are answered. First John 5:14 says, “This is our confidence before God: that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.”

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