Sermon Tone Analysis

Let your not your heart be troubled.

This command of Jesus implies something that each of us have discovered.

Life has a way of causing our hearts to be troubled, to be anxious, to know fear.

There are times where these words are confusing.

It would be easier to stand in front of a raging storm and command it to cease.

Perhaps, this is why Christ did just that as the disciples feared for their life on the sea of Galilee.

Christ seemed to take special care in the lives of his disciples to calm their hearts and help them trust in Him.

As we have been looking at the words that Christ told His disciples that night as their whole world began to implode in on them.

Christ was leaving, One of them would betray him, Peter would deny him.

All of their hopes seemed to be gone.

So Jesus says, “Let Your Hearts Be Not Troubled”, and then began teaching them how.

First He tells them that there is a Home waiting for them.

He was going to the cross to make the way for His followers to be with Him.

He proclaimed that all we need was in Him.

He is the way, He is the truth, He is the Life!

Next He shows them that He is Enough!

His Power, His Provisions, and His Presence is enough.

Then in , Jesus begins to tell his disciples how to take all of these things, the Hope of Home, The Sufficiency of Christ and live these truths out and what these truths will produce in their lives.

He calls it Abiding, and Christ explains that if we are to live a life that overcomes fear, that gives hope and comfort, to have a heart that is not anxious and a life that effects the world, we must learn to Abide.

And when we abide in Christ, Christ will calm our troubled hearts.

Life thats Apart from the Vine.

"Questions can make hermits out of us, driving us into hiding.

Yet the cave has no answers.

Christ distributes courage through community; he dissipates doubts through fellowship.

He never deposits all knowledge in one person but distributes pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to many.

When you interlock your understanding with mine, and we share our discoveries, when we mix, mingle, confess and pray, Christ speaks."

In this passage, Jesus tells us that he is the vine, the source of life and strength for his Disciples.

It is through his love and grace that the comfort we need flows.

And when we are separated from the source, Christ, we are cut-toff from the benefits of the Vine.

God is described as the husbandman, the one who cultivates and tends to the vineyard.

It is through His care and guidance that Christians thrive and grow, and it is also his job to prune and even removed branches that are not producing the fruit that they should.

So when Jesus says, Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away, He is describing the chastisement of God to Christians who are not drawing their life from Christ and therefore, living fruitless lives.

Some teach that Jesus is referring to the unsaved because of the strong language used.

However, Jesus said that every branch “IN” Him, which tells us that we are talking of believers.

And then there are those who teach that this means you can loose your salvation, but of course scripture teaches that you cannot, that once you are a child of God it is for eternity.

So what is Jesus telling us?

No, we cannot loose our salvation, but God does discipline His children and this is what is being described here.

He was thinking of Christians whose Christianity consisted of profession without practice, words without deeds; he was thinking of Christians who were useless branches, all leaves and no fruit.

What does a life apart from the fine look like?

A Fruitless Life is a Faithless Life

This is a difference between a life of Faith, and I life lived for self.

James puts it this way:

It is easy to say “‘Depart in Peace, be ye warmed and filled”.

Words cost little.

How often have we heard of a need and said “I will pray for you”.

It is true that Prayer is the greatest resource we have and we should pray for those who are in need.

The problem is when that is all we do, never once considering that perhaps I am the answer to that prayer!

How many divine appointments have we missed, How many times have we let opportunities to “show” the Love of Christ slip through our fingers.

James reminds us of the relationship between Faith and Works.

This reminds me of a story i had heard once.

A young man was invited to go fishing with an older gentlemen.

They both got in the boat and the older man began rowing them out into the lake.

As the young man watched, he noticed that there was something written on the each of the oars.

He asked about it and the older man showed him the oars.

On one the word Faith was written, on the other the word Works was written.

This confused the younger one and asked if he explain why.

So the older man silently put one oar in the water and began rowing.

The stayed in the same place on the lake and just turned in circles.

The man removed the first oar, and put the second oar in the water with the same result.

Then he put both oars in the water and they began to move across the lake.

The wise man said “"You see, to make a passage across the lake, one needs both oars working simultaneously in order to keep the boat in a straight and narrow way.

If one does not have the use of both oars, he makes no progress either across the lake nor as a Christian.”

Many Christians are leading anemic, powerless lives simply because they aren’t rowing with both oars.

A Fruitless Life is a Feeble Life

Christ describes us as branches and these are those branches who are fruitless.

They may look Good, have nice leaves (outward appearance) but no fruit will come.

These God (The husbandman) removes from the vine.

This does not mean that they are lost again, it means that they are cutoff from the source of strength and nourishment.

Lets look at this in the context of these culture of Jesus’ day.

The picture of the vine is seen throughout the OT.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea each describe Israel as a Vine.

But then Jesus calls himself the true vine (real, genuine).

He is setting himself apart from the vine spoken of by these prophets.

Why?

It is a curious fact that the symbol of the vine is never used in the Old Testament apart from the idea of degeneration.

The point of Isaiah’s picture is that the vineyard has run wild.

Jeremiah complains that the nation has turned ‘degenerate and become a wild vine’.

It is as if Jesus said: ‘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, as all your prophets saw.

It is I who am the true vine.

The fact that you are Jews will not save you.

The only thing that can save you is to have an intimate living fellowship with me, for I am the vine of God and you must be branches joined to me.’ Jesus was laying it down that not Jewish blood but faith in him was the way to God’s salvation.

No external qualification can set us right with God; only the friendship of Jesus Christ can do that.

All other sources that we attempt to cling to, to attach ourselves too are deficient, and weak and cannot satisfy the needs of your heart!

Our Work, Our Health, Or Finances…and as long as these things are going good, we are fine and we feel blessed.

We may even talk of how blessed we are and How good God is.

But they show their feebleness when then the boss, the doctor, the bank calls and you find that the things that you have clung to are too weak to sustain you.

The Jews clung to their heritage, they clung to the law, they clung to their own strength, and they were not sufficient.

And when we learn that those things in our lives were not enough, we begin to fear, to despair, to be troubled.

You see, Life Apart from the true vine is never enough.

Though we might look good on the outside, the evidence of Christ in our lives is lacking.

A Fruitless Life is Futile Life.

On bible scholar wrote that the wood of the vine when it was pruned of was too soft to be good for any purpose.

All that could be done with it would be to gather it a burn it.

A life lived apart from Christ is a Futile life.

Yes, there may be some who do good things for the poor and needy, who make scientific discoveries that help people, but in the grand scheme of eternity, these things matter little.

When we live apart from the true vine, apart from his strength, love and nourishment, we are living futile, useless lives.

And when our lives are examined, when we stand before the Glory of Christ himself, the Fruitless acts of our lives will be

How many of you like those $10 coffees at Starbucks?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not preaching against coffee, or even paying $10 dollars for a cup!