Abide in Christ

Kevin Perry

Abiding • Sermon • Submitted 10 months ago • Presented 10 months ago

John 15:1–17

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Notes

Transcript

Welcome

Good evening everyone! Thank you so much for having us. It has been about 2 years sense we were last here so we are really excited to be with you worshipping this weekend. And were looking forward to having some lunch tomorrow after the second service and we’d love to see you there! (afterwards so if your watching online you have a little bit of time to get over here for lunch.)

Let me introduce myself for those of you who don’t know us. My name is Kevin, this is my wife Rachel and our almost 5 month old son John. Rachel and I met while attending Multnomah University and Rachel actually grew up in Mike’s youth group back in Federal Way. So even though we’ve never been members of The Valley, we feel connected to this church through a lot of relationships!

Today’s sermon might be a little different then what your used to because I also wanted to give you an update on the work that Rachel and I have been involved with. But I don’t want to just talk just about ourselves, I want to share with you all from a passage of scripture that I’ve been trying to wrestle with over the past few weeks and hopefully encourage you with God’s word as well. So let me give you an idea of what I want to do with our time this evening. We’ll begin with an overview of the work that we’ve been doing the last two years. Then I want to open up a passage of scripture from the book of John and discuss how it impacts our lives and our work. Finally I want to leave you with some encouragement and maybe some challenges from the passage. Sound good?

The City

So for the past two years, Rachel and I have been living in a very populous city in the Middle East. Now unfortunately because of the nature of the work we do and where we live and the fact that this is being live streamed, I have to be somewhat vague about where we live. So feel free to ask us afterwards, we just can’t have anything online unfortunately.

But to give you an idea of the size of the city we live in I wanted to compare it to Longview. Now we’ve been to Longview a handful of times now, maybe like 10 or so, and I’ve never really thought of it as too crowded. In fact, I’m assuming that many of you live here because you don’t want to live in a huge city! According to the 2020 census the Longview Metropolitan Area which is all of Cowlitz County, has just over 110,000 people over about 1,141 square miles. So roughly 97 people per square mile.

Now our area is just a little bit bigger. Spread over just 2,063mi², our population is officially estimated at about 15 million but most people seem to think theres about 20 million people in the area with all of the refugees and undocumented workers. Thats about 9,700 people per square mile!

SO just a little bigger then Longview! Our city is huge! And its populated by the locals obviously, but its also has a huge refugee and migrant population. The majority of the population are Muslim. And the majority of refugees are Muslim. Out of all of the people in our city, our focus specifically with an unreached people group from Northern Afghanistan. I’ll give you a little bit more about them in a minute. But for now, I would love for you to be praying with us for both Longview & the City that we live in. Pray that the good news of Jesus Christ would continue to go!

The Team

Now it is not just Rachel and I (and John) by ourselves doing work. We are with a company and our company actually has two teams in the city. One team is pretty big and they do a lot of work with refugees that range from moms and tots programs, to health programs, to working through finances with refugees, and offering counseling services. Our team is a much much smaller and newer team. It’s just three families and a single girl. Our team focuses on seeing movements happen among refugees. That means we want to see reproducing churches planted that then go on to plant other churches. Each family unit sort of has their own people group focus on and then we all work together within those groups. One of the current difficulties is that our country has been denying a lot of visas for new people. In fact, just this week the single girl on our team found out that she was denied so she has to leave the country for three months before she tries to apply again. I would love for you to be praying for the team that we are on. That we would be able to continue to live and work there.

The Unreached People Group

Like I mentioned earlier, our specific people group come from Northern Afghanistan. According to the Joshua Project, this group is %99.99 Muslim. The reason that Rachel and I felt a deep desire to work with this group is because they are so unreached and yet there are so many of them in our city. Recently, I asked one of my friends how many people from his group are in this specific area of the city and he said, “I could throw rock and it would land on the head of one of our people.” Yet is is so unreached. In fact, I personally have only met 2 believers and only know of 2 more believers from their people group. Currently the only Christian resources in their language are half of the audio from the Jesus Film that was made in the 70’s and as of last year, about 40 audio recordings of bible stories from Creation to Cross. Just recently, our friend whose also studying this language got the rights to start translating the Jesus Story Book Bible and that will be the first written biblical resource they have. This people group desperately needs workers. And I would love for you to be praying with us for this group and other Unreached People Groups. That the Gospel would continue to go forth to the nations.

The Last Two Years

So, over the last two years what have we been doing? Well the first year, Rachel and I spent the whole time focusing on learning the language of the host country we live in. We need that language in order to live in the country, have a visa to stay there, interact with the local population, so it was extremely important to spend time getting proficient in it. After a year of learning that language, we made the switch to begin learning the language that the people group speaks. There are a total of zero written resources to help us learn this language so it’s been a little difficult. Thankfully we got connected to a school in Kabul, Afghanistan that has one teacher teaching this language and so we started taking online classes with him.

As we began learning their language we also began connecting with people in the community more and more.

Even though we’ve been spending the majority of our time focusing on language learning, a big part of language learning for us is getting into spiritual conversations. Very early on, we learned how to identify ourselves as followers of Jesus, how to invite people to study and hear stories about Jesus, and how to share the Gospel and our personal testimony in their language.

A lot of the work we do starts with meeting people and inviting them to talk about Jesus. And praise God He has been blessing it. In fact, my agnostic friend, back in January and February of this year, said yes to hearing more about Jesus. We began to meet and read and talk about stories of Jesus. After a few weeks of meeting, he made a profession of faith and was baptized! He is one of the four believers that I know of. One of the difficulties, however, is that because they are all refugees trying to get further West, two weeks after he was baptized he moved to Europe! Long term discipleship looks way different among people moving around the world. Would you pray for this new brother and would you continue to pray for the Work that we are doing.

Intro

Earlier, Rachel and I gave you a very brief look at what we’ve been doing over the last two years. Obviously there is so much more I could say, but what I would rather do is share with you one thing that I’ve been wrestling with and that the Lord has been convicting me of more and more.

I remember early on in my time at Multnomah they brought in an Irish missionary who worked in I believe the Philippines. I remember him saying that through the course of his life, he has needed to spend more and more time with God. In fact, he said that He cannot be successful in his day unless he first spends at least two hours in the morning in quiet prayer and reading of God’s word and communion with the Lord. Maybe for you two hours is not that much, but for me, especially when I was younger in my faith, that sounded like a long time.

I have been in full time vocational ministry for five years this summer. I got into this work because I felt called to glorify the name of the Lord among the nations. Five years is not a very long time, but it is long enough to realize that the seasons where my quiet time, or to use the language of the text, in seasons where my abiding is weak, my work is even weaker. Whats more, when my abiding time is weak, my love for Jesus, for His word, and for others is weak. To say it a different way, when my abiding is weak, I lack fruit. What I’ve learned and what the text teaches is that the only way to produce fruit is through abiding. Abiding in Jesus is what produces fruit.

Body

This is exactly what Jesus says as written in the Gospel of John in chapter 15:1-17. If you have your bibles, would you open them with me to.

While you’re getting there, let me give you a little bit of background. This passage falls in the section that is known as the farewell discourse, Jesus’ final teachings before He went to the cross. In this passage Jesus was specifically talking with his 12 close disciples right after the passover supper in the upper room.

The book of John as a whole is a book that shows us how Jesus is the way to eternal life. It also shows us how Jesus is the Son of God for the world, and as His followers, our life mission ought to be to make His name known to the world. I love what the ESV summary of the book has to say about John for the church today, "The global message of John for today’s church is to trust in Christ. Believe in him. Nourish yourself in him. Find life in him. And spread that life to everyone around you in your own little corner of the world." That, I think, is a good summation of today's passage because John 15:1-17 teaches us that true followers of Jesus are people that abide in Him and that abiding in Jesus produces fruit. As followers of Jesus, our main job, our collective purpose in life is trusting in and believing in Jesus, the work that he accomplished on the cross, spending time with Him, loving him, knowing Him, finding life in Him, and then letting that overflow into every aspect of our lives so everyone sees Christ in us. In other words, to abide in Christ and produce fruit for Him.

As I was studying this passage, I saw three main sections. A section that shows Roles and Responsibilities, Obligations and Outcomes, and then Christlikeness and Commands. So what we’re going to do is look through the different sections together and then talk through their implications.

Roles and Responsibilities v. 1-4

John 15:1–4 ESV

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 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. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 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.

The first section, verses 1-4, we see Jesus using horticulture imagery to illustrate different roles and responsibilities. And ultimately what the text already shows is that the natural outcome of Abiding in Jesus is the production of fruit. In verses 1 and two, Jesus says that He is the vine and the Father is the vinedresser, that is the Father is the one taking care of the vine. The branches are the disciples and there are two different types of branches: Unfruitful branches and Fruitful branches. For unfruitful branches, the Vinedresser comes and takes them away. For the Fruitful branches, the Vinedresser comes and prunes them, cleans them up, so that they would produce more fruit. The text tells us that Disciples are already clean by the Word of Jesus, therefore, their job, their responsibility is to simply abide in Him. Apart from the vine, the branches can do nothing.

Let’s take a look at the two different types of branches. There are some of us who follow Jesus and whose lives are marked by fruit and marked by the Father coming into our lives and cleaning them up. Sanctifying our walk so that day by day we might be more conformed into the image of the Son and produce more fruit for Him. And then there are some of us who follow Jesus, yet our lives don’t really produce anything. How do we become fruitful branches producing more fruit? Well you may think that you first need to start doing more good things for Jesus. You may think to yourself, “maybe I should volunteer in kids ministry, maybe I should give more of my finances to the church and to missions, maybe I should start supporting Kevin and Rachel!” And on one hand, those are all good. Those are good responses. As followers of Jesus we need to produce good fruit for the Father. Those are all good things, but if you want to actually produce more fruit for the Lord, you don’t start at the fruit itself. You have to start a little further back at the root.

In order to understand this better, we need to understand what Jesus means by fruit.

I believe that producing fruit in our lives has less to do with striving to do more for Jesus and has more to do with striving to be with Jesus. It has more to do with our faithfulness to the vine itself.

Don’t confuse doing good things in the name of Jesus as actually being in Jesus. We don’t have to look far to see many people who claim to know Jesus and do good things for Jesus and yet their lives are marked by sin that shows they weren’t actually abiding at all. Think of all of the pastors or Christian leaders who accomplish so much on the outside for the Kingdom and yet who ultimately fall away.

I have learned, painfully at times, that my own work, what I produce is worthless if I am not abiding in Jesus. It does not matter the amount of good deeds I do, if I am not abiding in Jesus all of my good deeds are like filthy rags. One of the scariest passages in scripture for me is Matthew 7:21-23 where Jesus says,

Matthew 7:21–23 (ESV)

“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. 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?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

b. From the outside, it looks as if branches are producing fruit. But in reality the text doesn’t say that they are producing fruit, rather the text says that they are doing “mighty works.” This shows us that if you want to know if you are producing fruit for the Father, trace it back to the vine itself. For if you abide in the vine then you will naturally produce fruit! That is to say, if you Abide in Jesus you will produce fruit. If you are a branch in the vine your responsibility is to not to focus solely on the works you are doing, rather your responsibility is to simply abide and through abiding produce fruit.

This section already begs a couple questions for each of us: 1. What type of branch are you? and 2. And are you truly abiding in Christ?

Obligations and Outcomes v. 5-8

John 15:5–8 ESV

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. 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. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

In the second section, we see obligations and outcomes laid out. As mentioned earlier, Jesus is clarifying that branches ought to abide in the vine which will naturally lead to the outcome of fruit. Abiding in Jesus naturally produces fruit. In fact, what we see is that apart from Jesus we can actually do nothing. The outcome of not abiding in the vine is that we will be cast out. The outcome of abiding in the vine is that we get to join in what God is doing. We get to prayerfully ask God and it will be done. And it is that abiding and fruit that ultimately glorifies the Father. It is this that actually proves our faith. It proves that we are His disciples. It is abiding in Jesus that produces fruit, glorifies the Father, and proves our faith.

So what does it mean to abide in the vine? Let me first tell you what it is not. Many followers of Jesus only spend time with Jesus when they come to church or when things in their life aren’t going well. And even then it is often just a surface level interaction with Jesus. No. True abiding goes deeper. Jesus says that without Him you can do nothing. Apart from Him you can do nothing. For the true branch, you have to continuously be connected to the vine otherwise you will die! Is your faith in Christ so real, so deep that HAVE TO be connected to Him? If not and if you are a branch, then you are obligated to tear out whatever is in your life that is keeping you from abiding in Him. That is keeping you from spending time with Him through prayer and through reading of His word and through spending time with His children and in His body. To abide in Jesus is to be in Him, to walk in Him. As the vine gets its nourishment and life from the continual abiding in the branch, so to do you need to get your life from the continual relationship with the Son of God.

It’s important to note that verse 7 is not teaching us that if we are Christians we get to treat the Holy Spirit as some sort of cosmic genie that gives us unlimited wishes. Sadly, many people prove this belief through their actions. I think a better view of the text here is one that gets at the heart attitude of the the disciple who is remaining in and abiding in Christ and in His word. If our hearts are abiding in Him truly then the things we will naturally be asking Him for are things that are inline with His will and will glorify the Father.

You cannot be in the vine and ask for superficial things to make your life more comfortable or more easy. “Father would you bless me with a bigger house?” “Father I pray for my 401k that I might retire early and enjoy free time in the mountains.” “Father I ask that you would get rid of my boss because he is a real thorn in my flesh.” If your prayers sound something like that then perhaps you are not praying for things that will actually glorify the Father.

Our team regularly spends time together in prayer. At least 3 times a weeks we meet to pray. The things we pray for are not selfish inward focus things, rather we are praying for hearts to turn and and people to repent because it is inline with God’s will. He wants more people to know Him truly and to worship and honor Him. The things we are asking for are things that we believe would glorify God.

Recently I’ve been convicted about how I pray for my son. He is only five months old and so I am still learning to pray for Him. What is better for me to pray: “Father, would you bless John, would you allow him to grow in knowledge to be successful in school so that he might get a good job and make good money and marry a good woman and have good children. In Jesus name Amen.” Or would it be better for me to pray like this: “Father, would you bless John. Would you save Him from a young age. Would you give Him wisdom to know you and know your will and be led by the Holy Spirit. Would you give Him a deep desire to die to Himself and live for you. Would you use John to go into the Mountains of Afghanistan, or to go into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, or to go to the radical Islamic extremists in Northern Africa so that he might give his life so that others might know the beautiful name of Jesus.” You don’t have to be a parent to know how difficult the second prayer is. You do have to truly abide in the vine in order to pray it and mean it.

This section begs the question for each of us here: What are you praying for? Are your prayers in line with God’s word and for His glory?

Christlikeness and Commands v. 9-17

John 15:9–17 ESV

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

In the final section we see Christlikeness and Commands. Jesus tells us that He is modeling how to love and how to obey in the way that He is loved by the Father and the way He obeys the Father’s commands. It is through keeping Jesus’ commands that His followers abide in His love. This obedience will naturally lead to being full of His joy and will naturally lead us to love others. It is in this section that we see that His commands are summarized in love. And not just love, but love that abides because Abiding in Jesus produces fruit. The fruit that we should be producing is not just a bunch of good works for Jesus, the fruit that we should be producing is a deep love for the Father and love for others. A love modeled by Jesus Himself.

This should remind us all of Matthew 22:36-40

Matthew 22:36–40 (ESV)

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Obeying the Fathers commandments begins with and is marked by love.

2. We also see in this section Friendship modeled. Great love is proven through the sacrifice of a friend. Jesus modeled this perfectly when He died on the cross and rose from the grave conquering death and sin and making a way for us all to be reconciled to the Father.

a. It’s important to note in this section that the word ‘Friends ‘in this context is not the same as me and my best friend. In that level, friendship equates sameness or equality. Here, friendship means that our status is changing. D.A. Carson notes, “The friend is let in on what is going on. This understanding stems not from superior intelligence or trained mental acuity, but from revelation graciously bestowed: Jesus himself makes known to his friends everything that he has learned from his Father." That Jesus is making us friends is an amazing thing. He is not making us equal with Him, rather He is showing, as the text says, how His disciples are no longer servants, but get to be brought in on the plan. He is making the Father’s will known.

4. I want to pay special attention to verse 16 because theres a lot in it. Many believe that they get to decide for themselves whether or not they want to be saved. Many say salvation is a gift and all we have to do is accept it. What is a better way of looking at our salvation is that Jesus saves us and chooses us and appoints us and we, through our abiding in Him, respond with love and faith and obedience. We are not the active agents in salvation, rather we are the the ones simply responding. We are saved not by our ability to choose Jesus, we are saved because Jesus lived a perfect and sinless life in perfect communion with Father, died on the cross and rose from the grave conquering death and sin, and through His Holy Spirit, calling us to repentance and belief in Him as the only way to the Father. Jesus actually chooses His disciples! He chooses us and appoints us to know Him, love Him, abide in Him. We are brought close and the truth is revealed to us. We are chosen and appointed to go and bear fruit through abiding in Him and with the help of the Father! This truly is good news for us.

Why does Jesus save us? What does the text say? So that we should go and bear fruit. And it is here that I want to focus even more in on. What does Jesus mean by the word Go?

a. While many make a connection to the 'Go' here to mean something along the lines as the great commission where Jesus commands His followers to Go to the nations, that is not necessarily what the text is stating. And, I'll be honest, as an overseas worker, in my initial reading, I wanted to make that conclusion as well. But in the Greek, this 'Go' and that of the great commission are actually different. When Jesus here says that He appointed us that we should go and bear fruit, what I believe he is saying is that as we go about our everyday life, we should be marked by good fruit. Theologian Henry Alford says, "The word go probably merely expresses the activity of living and developing principle; not the missionary journeys of the Apostles, as some have explained it." In other words, the go here is not a special situation of certain individuals going, rather it is for all believers of all times to in all things go and bear fruit. Why does that matter? Well, I fear that many of you sitting here may believe the lie that to share the Gospel is the task of those uniquely called into full time ministry. That it is up to your pastors, and elders, to the ones who have gone to bible college or seminary, to the ones who host or lead small groups, but not to you. But that is a lie. Who should be going and bearing fruit? Any of you who claim to follow Jesus. If you follow Jesus, if you have repented of your sin and believed in His name, if you've believed in the message of the Gospel that Jesus, the perfect son of God who lived sinless and yet was given up to die on the cross for our sins and who rose again three days later conquering sin and death and making a way for humans to be reconciled with the Father, if you have believed that and been made new in Christ, then here we see the you should be going into every new day, every interaction, every moment ready to abide and bear fruit in all that you do.

5. Finally, Jesus reiterates that all of this comes back down to love. Theologian David Gooding says, “The point and purpose of the preceding commandments: ‘that you will love one another.’” Love of God should naturally lead us to love one another. Here again we see that the fruit our abiding produces love! If you are not a loving person then perhaps your abiding is not quite right. Our lives as followers of Jesus should be marked by love.

Now I want to be careful here. This sort of love is not the same the love we see in the world. That love is often superficial and just wants you to be happy and your life to be easy and says that there is nothing wrong with you. you are perfect just the way you are. The biblical sort of love is vastly different. It wants true life for you. It says that you are broken and messed up but that Christ died to make you whole again. It teaches us to repent and believe in the Gospel and to be made whole.

3. This section begs the question for each of us here: Are you obeying His commands? Are you full of His joy and is your life marked by love for God and for others? Have you been chosen and are you going and producing fruit?

Conclusion

In some ways this passage is extremely simple and in others its very complex. Complex in some of the theological implications and simple in that the command is clear: True followers of Jesus abide in Him and produce fruit. Fruit that glorifies the Father and proves our faith.

Friends, the vinedresser will come and inspect the branches. He will prune the ones producing fruit in order that they may produce more fruit. And the vinedresser will cutoff the branches that don't produce any fruit. That means for the follower of Jesus, as we stay in the word, stay in relationship with Jesus, stay in prayer and meditation, stay in union with the body, we will produce fruit. If you are not producing fruit, you have only to look at your abiding in Christ. Are you truly and continuously abiding in Him?

As I mentioned earlier, I am coming into five years of ministry and my birthday is actually on Monday. As I am reflecting on the past five years and thinking through the next, one desire I have for my life is that it would be marked by a deep deep abiding in Christ. That I would need to spend hours upon hours of the day in fellowship with and commune with the Son through the Spirit so that in whatever I do, I might glorify the Father. As I think through the question, how might the next five years be marked by deeper abiding, I think of four simple things that I will start doing more of this week.

And if you are already in the vine and you are wondering what it looks like for you to deepen your faith, then I want to offer to you these four suggestions as well.

Would you start with me this week in reading your bibles daily and writing out a prayer? Every morning, read a passage of scripture and journal out a prayer. If your new to this, just take 5 minutes and follow along with the Valley’s reading plan. If you already have a good rhythm going, try to spend a few more minutes deepening what you already have.

Would you start this week in memorizing scripture? You can use different tools like the Verse app or simply writing out verses on note cards. You can start this week by memorizing John 15:5 from the text today. Whatever it is, strive this week to spend time memorizing scripture so that you can hide His Word in your heart.

And finally, this week, would you strive to share the Gospel? Think of someone in your life who is either far off from Jesus or does not know Him at all. Pray for an opportunity to share the good news of the hope you have in Christ. Pray for an opportunity to tell them that Jesus, the perfect son of God, came to the world and lived a perfect life, showing us all how to live. He went to the cross taking the punishment that we deserved for our sin on Himself. That He died and that three days later He rose again proving His divinity and putting to death sin and death once and for all. And that for those who repent of their sin and believe in their heart that Jesus is Lord, that their is salvation only in His name, we now have the hope that one day everything will be made right and we will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. Not because of anything we can do, but because of whats been done for us. Allow this sharing to be an outflow of your abiding. Love Jesus so so much that you cannot help but tell others of His goodness. Allow your life to be filled by His joy so that others would see Christ in you.

Now some of you here today may hear this message and examine your life and find out that you are not actually in the vine. That you do not actually know Him. If that is you, don’t let another day go by where you are apart from the vine. Believe this good news. Jesus died on the cross and conquered sin so that you don’t have to try to work your way into relationship with the Father. You cannot! Jesus is the only way to salvation and He is calling you today. Come and talk to us or one of the leaders here and discuss with them what it would look like for you to be grafted into the vine so that you too can abide and bear fruit that glorifies the Father. So that you can experience perfect love and joy from Him.

I hope that you have seen clearly from this passage that followers of Jesus are those who are Abiding in Him and through that producing fruit for Him. Abiding in Christ, obeying His commands proves our faith in Him. It shows to the world that we are followers of Jesus and that salvation can only come through Him.