Abide
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You Cant Change
You Cant Change
Im being a little bit ridiculous with the title of this point because I want it to force us to pay close attention to what the scripture teaches us about how real spiritual change takes place.
But before I can show you how we can change, I have to convince you that you cannot change yourself.
Here is a perfect example of why we have to start with this point…(play the Shai Labouf video)
This is a ridiculous video of Shai Labouf performing a routine for an acting class that he participated in back in 2015. He was challenged to give a motivational speech and this was what transpired.
After you get passed the ridiculousness of the act, you start to realize that many of the things that he says are actually things that we believe.
All of us have dreams, we all have things in life that we want to experience or achieve. We may dream of becoming a professional athlete, losing weight, graduating from college, and the slogan that Nike created in 1988 “Just Do It” has been a successful battle cry for all of us who have been born and raised in America.
Im not hating on Nike or the slogan, I think that in many regards it is absolutly briliant.
But there is one area of life that I think this battle cry is incredible unhelpful, and I would even say deceptively incedious—the Life of the Soul.
Many of us, and I might even dare to say all of us, here this evening desire to experience change spiritually. This is a really good desire, it is God given, we were created for this very purpose. The Westminster Catechism puts it brilliantly, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” We were all created for this purpose, and it should be something that we aspire to grow in each and everyday.
The problem is that we often times find ourselves confused on how we can accomplish this goal. Far too often we buy into the lie that we should “Just Do It.” We dream of being people who read our Bibles daily, who pray more, who give generously, who obey all the commands of God. And many times in this attempt to become those people, we find ourselves living under the guise of Nike and the “Just Do It.” Slogan.
Read you Bible, just do it.
Pray, just do it.
Be Sexually Pure, just do it.
Stop making excuses, just do it already...
Make your spiritual dreams come true...
But the problem is that we cant just do it...
Look with me at
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.
The true light that gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ ”) Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
This was John’s testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?”
He didn’t deny it but confessed: “I am not the Messiah.”
“What then?” they asked him. “Are you Elijah?”
“I am not,” he said.
“Are you the Prophet?”
“No,” he answered.
“Who are you, then?” they asked. “We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What can you tell us about yourself?”
He said, “I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord—just as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. So they asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you aren’t the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?”
“I baptize with water,” John answered them. “Someone stands among you, but you don’t know him. He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.” All this happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I told you about: ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
The next day, John was standing with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
The two disciples heard him say this and followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked them, “What are you looking for?”
They said to him, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come and you’ll see,” he replied. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon.
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard John and followed him. He first found his own brother Simon and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated “the Christ”), and he brought Simon to Jesus.
When Jesus saw him, he said, “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which is translated “Peter”).
The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and told him, “Follow me.”
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law (and so did the prophets): Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asked him.
“Come and see,” Philip answered.
Then Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
“Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you,” Jesus answered.
“Rabbi,” Nathanael replied, “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel!”
Jesus responded to him, “Do you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” Then he said, “Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
On the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding as well. When the wine ran out, Jesus’s mother told him, “They don’t have any wine.”
“What does that have to do with you and me, woman?” Jesus asked. “My hour has not yet come.”
“Do whatever he tells you,” his mother told the servants.
Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification. Each contained twenty or thirty gallons.
“Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the headwaiter.” And they did.
When the headwaiter tasted the water (after it had become wine), he did not know where it came from—though the servants who had drawn the water knew. He called the groom and told him, “Everyone sets out the fine wine first, then, after people are drunk, the inferior. But you have kept the fine wine until now.”
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
After this, he went down to Capernaum, together with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they stayed there only a few days.
The Jewish Passover was near, and so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling oxen, sheep, and doves, and he also found the money changers sitting there. After making a whip out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!”
And his disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me.
So the Jews replied to him, “What sign will you show us for doing these things?”
Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”
Therefore the Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and will you raise it up in three days?”
But he was speaking about the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.
While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. Jesus, however, would not entrust himself to them, since he knew them all and because he did not need anyone to testify about man; for he himself knew what was in man.
There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
“How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
“How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
“Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied. “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.
“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”
After this, Jesus and his disciples went to the Judean countryside, where he spent time with them and baptized.
John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water there. People were coming and being baptized, since John had not yet been thrown into prison.
Then a dispute arose between John’s disciples and a Jew about purification. So they came to John and told him, “Rabbi, the one you testified about, and who was with you across the Jordan, is baptizing—and everyone is going to him.”
John responded, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I’ve been sent ahead of him.’ He who has the bride is the groom. But the groom’s friend, who stands by and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the groom’s voice. So this joy of mine is complete. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is from the earth is earthly and speaks in earthly terms. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, and yet no one accepts his testimony. The one who has accepted his testimony has affirmed that God is true. For the one whom God sent speaks God’s words, since he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hands. The one who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life; instead, the wrath of God remains on him.
When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), he left Judea and went again to Galilee. He had to travel through Samaria; so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.
A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
“How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
“Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
“Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
“Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” Jesus said. “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
“Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”
The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They left the town and made their way to him.
In the meantime the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
But he said, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”
“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them. “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest. The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”
Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. Many more believed because of what he said. And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”
After two days he left there for Galilee. (Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) When they entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival. For they also had gone to the festival.
He went again to Cana of Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die.
Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
“Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my boy dies.”
“Go,” Jesus told him, “your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed.
While he was still going down, his servants met him saying that his boy was alive. He asked them at what time he got better. “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him,” they answered. The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household.
Now this was also the second sign Jesus performed after he came from Judea to Galilee.
After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
“Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.
Now that day was the Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”
He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’
“Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.
Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed. And just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he wants. The Father, in fact, judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
“Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.
“Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself. And he has granted him the right to pass judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good things, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked things, to the resurrection of condemnation.
“I can do nothing on my own. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies about me, and I know that the testimony he gives about me is true. You sent messengers to John, and he testified to the truth. I don’t receive human testimony, but I say these things so that you may be saved. John was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light.
“But I have a greater testimony than John’s because of the works that the Father has given me to accomplish. These very works I am doing testify about me that the Father has sent me. The Father who sent me has himself testified about me. You have not heard his voice at any time, and you haven’t seen his form. You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent. You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.
“I do not accept glory from people, but I know you—that you have no love for God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and yet you don’t accept me. If someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. How can you believe, since you accept glory from one another but don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But if you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe my words?”
John
In this passage Jesus teaches us about how we can experience a spirutally fruitful life. He says that the way we do this is by abiding or “remaining” in him. But look at why he tells us that we must abide in Him. Look at verses 4&5
Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
Jesus tells us that the human heart is incapable of being spiritually fruitful.
He uses this illustration of a vine and vine branches as an example. He says, “Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.”
Jesus’ teaching is simple. He compares spiritual fruit to that of a vine that is attached to a life giving branch. He says that just as the vine is unable to produce fruit without a life source—a branch—so it is with us. We are unable to experience spiritual change, spiritual growth, spiritual fruitfulness on our own.
The Heart of the Problem is Our Heart
In this passage Jesus tells us that it is impossible to live a spiritually fruitful life apart from abiding in Him.
What is he saying? He is saying that there is something incurious about the human heart…that the human heart is incapable of producing any actions or works that are pleasing to God in and of itself.
Look at what the Apostle Paul says about the human condition in: Romans 5:12-14
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
Paul gives us our diagnoses in this passage. He gives us some insight into why we are unable to live fruitful lives in and of ourselves. According to this passage, he says that we have an infection that has brought about spiritual death.
What does the Spiritual Death Mean?
It means that we are separated from God.
This is what took place in the Garden of Eden when God removed Adam and Eve from the midst of the garden. It is a picture of the loss of union between God and man.
We, who have inherited that curse, are now born seperated from God.
It means that we Love our SIN and hate God
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
We are
It means we cant change ourselves…
Why am I spending so much time on this point?
It’s because I want us to see that the way we grow spiritually is not through discipline, it isnt through living by “12 rules for life”, it isnt by doing anything...
Many of us in this room are plagued with thinking that God is always mildly disgusted with us because we lack the ability to be obedient to God the way that we know we should. We have tried all the tricks of the religious trade to change our bad habits and implement better ones.
Yet no matter how hard we have tried, we cannot seem to overcome our sin.
And I want us to be very clear tonight, the reason you havent been able to overcome your indwelling sin is that YOU CANNOT do it!
But Christ CAN
You Can BE Changed
You Can BE Changed
Look at what Jesus says
v. 1—I am the true vine...
The image of a vine wasnt new to Jewish people, all throughout the OT God likened Israel, His elect, to that of His Vine.
You cleared a place for it; it took root and filled the land. The mountains were covered by its shade, and the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out sprouts toward the Sea and shoots toward the River. Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its fruit? Boars from the forest tear at it and creatures of the field feed on it. Return, God of Armies. Look down from heaven and see; take care of this vine, the root your right hand planted, the son that you made strong for yourself. It was cut down and burned; they perish at the rebuke of your countenance.
I will sing about the one I love,
a song about my loved one’s vineyard:
The one I love had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones,
and planted it with the finest vines.
He built a tower in the middle of it
and even dug out a winepress there.
He expected it to yield good grapes,
but it yielded worthless grapes.
So now, residents of Jerusalem
and men of Judah,
please judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more could I have done for my vineyard
than I did?
Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes,
did it yield worthless grapes?
Now I will tell you
what I am about to do to my vineyard:
I will remove its hedge,
and it will be consumed;
I will tear down its wall,
and it will be trampled.
I will make it a wasteland.
It will not be pruned or weeded;
thorns and briers will grow up.
I will also give orders to the clouds
that rain should not fall on it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of Armies
is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah,
the plant he delighted in.
He expected justice
but saw injustice;
he expected righteousness,
but heard cries of despair.
This passage is one of many where God tells Israel that they were his Vine, His garden, HIs people…and each time God spoke of Israel this way it was always negative.
Psalm 80:916
God had made His vine to be a people who abided in Him, who drew their life from relationship with Him. Israel was God’s elected people that He would bless to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Yet Israel constantly rebelled against God. As Isaiah puts it, “For the vineyard of the LORD of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah, the plant he delighted in. He expected justice but saw injustice; He expected righteousness, but he heard cries of despair.”
Israel was supposed to be God’s plan to restore all things to himself, they were supposed to be God’s new Eden—His Vineyard.
But they werent.
It is with this background in mind that Jesus says these words in .
Jesus says that HE is the Vine.
Tranlation—Everything that Israel was meant to be, every blessing they were meant to recieve and bestow to the world, every gift that was designed for them, every unction of divine power that they were meant to recieve....Jesus says, I have it all...
Salvation—It comes from me
Holiness—It comes from me
Blessings—Comes from me
Favor—Comes from me
Love—Comes from me
Rest—Comes from me
Jesus is saying that he is the source of spiritual life…all of the blessings of God are to be recieved through and in Him!
Jesus says, “I am the bread of life...” in , Eat Him and you will be satisfied forever.
Jesus says, “I am LIVING Water...” in , Drink HIm and you will never be spiritually thirsty again.
Jesus is the source of spiritual life…there is simply no one and no place else that we can turn to in order to experience spiritual life. No religion, no discipline, no habit, no self-help book, no guru, no therapist…Jesus is our only hope.
Jesus says,
This is why Jesus tells us that we must abide in Him...
So what does this mean? How do we abide in Christ? Everything in us jumps to pragmatism in this moment. Our hearts long for Shai Labouf…JUST DO IT
What do I need to do?!
The word “Abide” in this passage is from the Greek root μένω.
μένω
μένω
Menno means to “Remain” or “Dwell”
What Jesus is saying is, “No matter what happens, no matter what challenges you face, no matter what comes your way. DWELL WITH ME!
JESUS ISNT TELLING US TO DO ANYTHING…HE IS TELLING US TO “BE”
He calls us into relationship…and He promises to transform us through His Empowering Presense—The Holy Spirit.
So how do we experince transformation and change? How do we live a spiritually fruitful life? By Falling as DEEPLY in love with Jesus through the Holy Spirit as we possibly can. Through dwelling with Jesus in every moment of this life.
There are practical ways to do that…and that will be the topic of this series over the next few weeks...
For years many of you have heard me preach about practicing the disciplines…for these next few weeks we are going to be discussing how we can practice dwelling in the presence of God.
It isnt going to be about changing ourselves. It will be about how we can position ourselves to be changed by the only one who can bring real and lasting transformation…Jesus our True Vine
But some of us in here tonight cant abide because we arent attached to Jesus...