(John 15 #1) I Am the True Vine — Ed Miller

Well, good evening. It's good to be with you, and we have certainly laid this before the Lord, as I'm sure you have as well. And it's our desire that we see the Lord together, and I'm sure that's been your prayer.

Reliance on the Holy Spirit for Spiritual Understanding

Before we begin, I want to remind you of a principle that is absolutely indispensable, and that principle is total reliance upon God's Holy Spirit. How we do praise the Lord for the Bible and for every aid, every assistance, every help, every book, every commentary, every word study, every atlas, every concordance, every help.

But the bottom line, brothers and sisters in Christ, after you've plowed through the helps, you better come before the Lord as a little baby, and you better say, Lord, now you unveil Christ to my heart.

If you don't trust God to illumine your heart to this book, He won't use what is helpful anymore. We thank Him for the helps, but they're not indispensable. His revelation, the Bible like our Lord, is human and divine.

We need the human side. We don't encourage or glory in ignorance. We want the scholarship, but there's also a divine side, and only God can give that. Now, before we pray together, I'm going to ask you to turn.

The Disciples’ Failure to Understand Clear Revelation

We will be in John 15, but for a moment, turn to Luke chapter 18, please. Chapter 18. He said to them, Behold, we're going up to Jerusalem. All things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.

Then he gives a list. He'll be handed over to the Gentiles. You know anything about that? He'll be mocked. Simple facts. None of these things. The meaning of this statement was hidden from them. They did not comprehend.

Nothing could be simpler than the fact that He gave. He'll be handed over. He'll be beaten. He'll be scurred. He'll be spit upon. He'll die. And they said, We don't reveal it. We don't get it. No matter how clear it is, we trust the Lord to give us grace to walk in the light as He is in the light.

I thank thee again for this precious book. Spirit who lives in our hearts, statements plain to our spirit. We will see your face. We will be enlightened. We will be changed. We will see the Lord in a living and in a vital way.

I ask this in the all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus. John chapter 15. Look at this marvelous text. John 15, 1 -17. How God's people have been blessed by this passage through the years. Now, let me make a couple of introductory comments before we look into the text itself.

Approaching a Familiar Passage with Fresh Revelation

I'm under no delusions as I come before you. This evening. I understand that this is the familiar passage and I also got intelligence that you've already been studying it. That's one of the blessings I have in my own heart, ministering here at Family Ministries because the text is known in advance and you eat it up and meditate on it and it just saves me from some donkey work.

And I appreciate that. But everybody knows what we're going to talk about. You know, Christ is the vine and Christians are the branches and we abide in the vine and the vine provides for the branches and our Father is the husbandman and he prunes the fruitful branch.

So I understand that there's nothing new here, but I am praying that even though I won't say anything you haven't heard before, anoint it so that the reality of the truth would refresh our souls. It doesn't have to be new.

It doesn't have to be novel. Look at these well-known precious truths. What I'm going to call attention to is I'm going to give an outline, but I also know because of the nature, this chapter preaches itself, and because of the nature of the content of this wonderful chapter, there will be overlapping.

In other words, we're going to speak about the true vine, but we've got to touch abiding when you talk about the vine. And we're going to talk about abiding in Christ and we're going to have to talk about how he deals with the vine.

We're going to go back and forth so there will be overlapping. And then the last thing I want to say by way of introduction is that we're familiar with this passage. We're not familiar with it. You know what I mean by that?

Every part of God's truth has no bottom to anything. When you come to this book, there's just no end to it. And though there is a wonder and a mystery here, I've asked God this weekend to enable us to appropriate and enter in to everything that he has revealed.

I have an idea that sometimes we hide behind mystery as an excuse for ignorance. Somehow it sounds honorable to sit at the feet of mystery and take off our shoes and sing Holy Graft and not enter in, not claim that.

There's mystery here, but we're not going to use the mystery as an excuse for ignorance because it's revealed mystery. And so we want to enter in. We don't want to play with things. We're not trying to dazzle anybody with light.

I'm not going to spring any truth on you. You know what we're going to talk about. But I want to enter in and ask God to help us appropriate everything that he has revealed. John chapter 15. Read aloud those 16 verses.

Maybe a couple of you can read a couple of verses and someone else. And let's just read 1 to 16. If you feel like you'd like to share in that, just stand up and read loud enough so everyone can get it.

A few verses, sit down and then someone else will read through 16. Of what I'd like to cover this evening, tomorrow evening, Lord willing, and then on the Lord's day. It's a simple outline and almost everyone who touches this text divides it up this way.

Tonight, I'd like to focus on the heart of God in terms of the statement, I am the true. Say that. What did he mean by that? And so by God's assistance, we want to nail down the revelation of Christ as the true vine.

And then logically, we want to look at all that God intends by the truth. Abide in me in order that you might bring forth fruit. What's that all about? Abiding in order to bring forth fruit. I think beyond the doubt, the main message of this section to the balance of Scripture, the vine is a very precious illustration in the mind, in the heart of God.

The Vine as a Biblical Picture of Joy, Covenant, and God’s People

He didn't use it once or twice or three times. And we say the tree planted by the water, that's a picture of the righteous man. We say the rock, that's a picture of, we say the brook, that picture's. What is the vine picture?

In the eternal councils way back before there was anything and God decided, I think I'll create a vine. Why did God say that? He didn't say, I don't believe. Well, the vine, you know, spruce up the creation.

It's pretty. It's nice. Now, God had something in his heart, in his mind. The whole creation is a museum. Everything has its spiritual counterpart. Several illustrations go into the life of milk and honey, the land, the promised land.

And when he wanted to picture it, you remember the story, Numbers chapter 13, the spies go into the land and they bring back an earnest, a forte, what they bring back. I better create the vine and the grapes because I want a picture.

And that one cluster of grapes being carried on a pole between two people. I said, I think I'll create a vine. Look at that wine, 104. Wine that makes glad. And so when we talk about natural joy, the world talks about wine.

That's natural joy. And God says, don't be drunk with wine, but be filled, right, with the spirit of God. Natural joy, picturing this supernatural joy in the Lord that has no hangover. God's joy. God said, I'm going to create the vine because I want a picture, the promised land.

And I want to picture the joy of the Lord. Picture his people, all his people, Israel. Hosea 10 .1. Talk about that in another connection. What we love so much, beautiful things in his heart. He said, I'm going to create a vine to picture the promised land.

I'm going to make a vine to picture the joy of the Lord. I'm going to make a vine in order to picture my people, Israel. I'm going to use the vine to picture the new covenant. And when he wanted to picture security and safety, 1 Kings 4 and other places, he pictured his people sitting under the vine and under the fig tree, safe and secure.

The vine, God's picture of his love in the Song of Solomon. He said, my love, the picture, the judgment, Revelation 14. He sends out the angels to gather the clusters from the vine of the earth to be destroyed.

It's all God's picture. And when he wanted to picture heaven, he said, I'm not going to drink this anymore with you down here. The next time I drink this, we'll be there. Every time you see the vine, he's telling us something wonderful and something glorious.

When he begins his great ministry on the earth and he begins his miracle, how does he begin? He turns water into wine. It's not an accident. This is all planned by God. How precious is the vine. And when he wanted us to remember him, you know the story.

He took the cup, precious blood of Christ, the juice in as the vine. And when he wants to picture marriage, he said, and the woman, she'd be like a fruitful vine. This is not a mistake. Every place you look.

So don't read vine. La la la. It's one of God's most prolific pictures created on purpose to illustrate everything. You know why? Because say the vine, that's the love of God. And that's the joy of the Lord.

And that's the promised land and that's marriage and that's union and that's fellowship and that's the blood of Christ. And that's the new covenant and that's grace. I'm the truth. I'm the truth. Everything divine pictures all through the scriptures.

Jesus as the True Vine Rather Than Israel or Human Institutions

Jesus said, I'm the true vine. No other picture that I know of, except one I might touch on in a little while. No other picture except these two. Go so far, say so much and to communicate more of God's precious truth.

Then this point, this is about one day before he dies. What made him come up with this illustration? What made him think of it? Some would say because the vine, you know, in the new Testament times, because when Herod enlarged and beautified the temple, they had this tremendous, elaborate vine over the door of the temple.

It was, scholars tell us, it was one of the most prominent sites in Jerusalem. You came to Jerusalem that you had to stop and see the vine. Scholars tell us that the clusters of grapes that hung on that vine, made out of gold and made out of gems, some of the clusters were the size of a man.

And they would just hang there. One commentator I read said, in that day, it was estimated that just the vine was worth about $12 million. I don't know if it was worth $12 million. I'm not fighting for that.

I don't care if it was worth $12 million, but I'm trying to show you the prominence of the vine in that day. Whether that was the reason that he thought of it, or whether in the upper room there's an open window and the vines are coming in, or whether it's because he instituted the Lord's table and used the cup and thought of the vine, or whether going down when they departed into the Kidron Valley there, on the way to Gethsemane, they went by vines, or because he was the mighty creator and had planned it all, I created the vine to picture this.

Whatever the reason, he said that day, I am the true vine. I want to suggest for you, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we press in on the heart of God, that I think he meant when he said, I'm the true vine.

And if God can begin to break these two things on us, if he can dawn this truth on us, we'll be ready for what it means to abide in Christ, with abiding in Christ. Basic, so cardinal, so fundamental to understand God's heart when he said, I am the true vine.

It means at least these two things. Let me get that before your heart. I think he meant when he said, I am the true vine, I think he meant this. I am the true vine, or not. And the reason I say that, see, we don't read this with a Jewish mindset, but all along the way, they were taught we're the vine.

And when they put that vine up over the door, and some visitor came, they would say, see the vine, that's us. Let me give you a couple of verses on that. Turn, if you would, to Psalm 80. The psalmist sang about that.

Psalm 80, verse 8. The nations implanted it, thou preparest room before it, it took deep root, it filled the land. The mountains were covered with the shadow of it, leaders of God, it set out its branches to the sea and shoots to the river.

They sang that. We are the vine that was brought out of Egypt and planted in the land and spread all over. And then when they got messed up and went under the chastening rod, look at verse 14. Turn again, we beseech thee, O God of hosts, look down from heaven, behold, visit this vine.

They were the vine, Israel was the vine, and the stock which thy right hand has planted, the branch that thou made strong for thyself. In Isaiah chapter 5, the prophets spoke about it. In Isaiah chapter 5, verse 1, let me now sing for my beloved a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.

My well beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. He dug it all around, removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in the middle of it and he hewed out a wine vat in it.

He expected it to produce good grapes. What's the vineyard? The vineyard of the Lord of hosts, the house of Israel and of Judah. They were the vine. They went into their Bible. They're the vine. God took them out of Egypt.

God planted them in the land. They are the choice plant. Jeremiah spoke of it in chapter 2, 21. I planted you a choice vine, a completely faithful seed. How you've turned yourself into a degenerate vine.

The prophet said, God has laid his vine waste. It's his vine. It's his people. The idea of cared for by the Lord, being watered day and night, being watched over, that gave them a national pride. They were glad to tell everybody they were God's vine.

Ezekiel 15, because in Ezekiel, he gives the clue why he used vine for that. They didn't get it. In Ezekiel 1, the Lord came to me saying, son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood of a branch which is among the trees of the forest?

Can wood be taken from it to make anything? Can man make a peg from it on which to hang a vessel? If it's been put into the fire for fuel and the fires consume both of its ends and its middle part has been charred, is it useful for anything?

Behold, if while it is intact, it's not made into anything, how much less when the fire consumes it and it's charred, can it be made into anything? Why God choose the vine? Because it's worthless wood.

That's why it was a picture of Israel. They didn't get that, but that's why he chose it. Because you can't do anything. You can't make a stool out of a vine. You can't make a hat rack out of a vine. What can you make out of a vine?

Maybe a wreath or a whistle. That's all you can do with a vine. You can't go to Scott's Furniture and say, give me something in grapevine. They probably don't carry it. Ezekiel tried to point out, if the wood of a vine is worthless when it's alive, if it's cut off and if it's put in the fire and burned, what are you going to do with that wood?

And even when Israel was under chastening and when they were cut off and charred and burned on both ends, they still didn't get it. And they said, we are God's vine. I don't know why God called you the vine in the first place, but they didn't get it.

Well, by the time we come to the New Testament, they've had, you know, 4 ,000 years of this. You're the vine, you're the vine, you're the vine, you're the vine, there's the vine, golden vine, beautiful vine, I'm the vine.

And Jesus comes up on this last day and said, before I go, you need to know. For them to hear that, that was such an amazing statement, that they were not the vine. 15 .4 and 5, please learn this, and sometimes we have to be shocked out of it too, because even though, you know, we hold the creed and we're orthodox and we say, we believe the truth, it convinces you, you're not the vine.

We think we're the vine. In the vine, neither can you except for the deity of Christ. We look for a verse that says, Jesus is God. Sometimes there's better verses than those verses that say, Jesus is God.

Think of one of your neighbors, just one of them. You got a name in mind? And say, without me, you can do nothing. You know what they'll say? Who do you think you are? What kind of arrogance is that? Our Lord Jesus said, he can do nothing.

He's God. Apart from me, he can do nothing. And the reason it's so hard to grasp that is because we've proved him wrong many times. He can do nothing. Yes, I can. I can do a lot of stuff without God. I'm not going to point fingers, but I'll bet you there are ministries that have been built and not come from God.

And churches, families, he can do nothing. He's involved in a lot of work. Without me, he can do nothing that can be called fruit. You can do a lot of stuff, but nothing. Remain, that will glorify God.

He can do nothing. Look to some vine that is not Jesus. If we think we're the vine, or if we think the church is the vine, or we think some ministry is the vine, or some man or some woman is the vine, then I'm the true vine.

And by that, he meant, you're not the vine. And you're not the vine. But you get the idea. Our Lord Jesus is the vine. You know, I'm not going to get into my testimony, but for years, I thought you faint, discouraged, and so frustrated.

Off your own energy, and you try to generate and build up this zeal, and get involved, and you've been there. That's not the main thing he meant, though, when he said, I'm the vine, you're not. Let me suggest another thing that he meant when he said, I am the true vine.

Christ as the Reality and Environment of the Believer

I think he meant that I am the vine, that is, I created the vine to picture something. And I am the reality that I pictured that vine to create. In the original, I am the genuine vine. I am the reality that answers to the vine.

If the vine pictures the promised land, and natural joy, and supernatural joy, and the love of God, and the new covenant, and security, and heaven, and that whole list I gave you, he's saying, I'm the true vine, the reality of all of that.

I want you to imagine with me, play with me here. I want you to go back in your imagination, because I'm going to put words in God's mouth. I don't want to be irreverent, but I think on the level of earth, we've got to create things to get us looking in the right direction.

I think it went something like this. Eternity path. And I speak as a fool, and he's trying to figure out what he's going to say. I think I'll create something because I want to communicate me, and I'm going to create things to picture me.

I'm going to make a great museum that they can live in. And so I need to communicate my truth to them. And so God thinks, how can I communicate? I want them to have life. I want them to have life with a capital L.

I want them to have abundant life. How can I communicate life? And I think God said, I know what I'll do. And then I know when I create life, that they'll look at life, and they'll study life, and they'll observe life, and maybe they'll catch on.

I'll put life in the sea, and I'll put life on the land, and I'll make bugs, and I'll make birds, and I'll make elephants, and I'll make fish, and I'll make plants and mushrooms, and I'll make life everywhere.

And so every time they turn around, they're going to say, life, life, life. Maybe they'll catch on. And I'll just make that so that they'll understand. He also created inorganic things, which is another picture we won't get into.

That is just as thrilling, but we won't touch that. And so God's plan was to create an organic world. Life in the river, life in the puddle, life in the drop, life in the air, life. No, I'm right. It's there.

He designed this plan that all organisms have in common, this something. They don't know what to call it. They call it protoplasm, and they break it down, well, it's got carbon, it's got hydrogen, and it's got nitrogen, but there's something missing.

It's called life, and they don't know what it is. They just recognize it. And it's different from a stone, because a stone doesn't have that thing called life. A bug has life. A stone doesn't have life.

And there's an unbridgeable gulf between the stone, and the plant, and the flower, and the insect. I'm not trying to define life. I'm just trying to recognize that God made this on purpose. And then God said, that's what I'll do.

I'll make all of that life. But I got to be careful not to make anything that lives. Not one thing in life can have independent life. My picture. So God said, all right, now I got life. Now I think I will create something that can survive, and grow, and develop, and multiply.

I think I'll make all that happen in the eternal council. And God just said, I'm going to make the environment so that life can live. I've created a zillion forms of life, and now I've got to make an element in which they can live, and move, and have their being.

So it came to pass, and you know it. Life. Organic life. And in every living thing is that principle of life. But in no living thing is the condition of life. The conditions of life are in the environment.

The principle of life is in the organism. And so I have lungs, but I need the atmosphere. And so I have a stomach. You've noticed that I have a stomach. I need food. God has made me in such a way, in everything, so that the living thing needs the environment.

God said, in my museum, organism. He made it. God designed it that way. What is life for an organism on the level of earth? In the words of science, what is life? Life is just an organism living in union with its environment.

What is death? Death is when that organism is cut off somehow from its environment. If it's cut off a little bit, it dies a little bit. When it's finally cut off, it's altogether dead. And so the deaf are dead to the whole world of sound.

They're cut off from that part of the environment. And the blind, they're cut off from the whole world. They're dead to the whole world of sight. Sometimes the environment changes. Sometimes we can't to adjust.

And you can read all that in your science book, from a storm, maybe from cold weather. But sometimes something happens, maybe in here, and I can't run anymore. And I'm cut off from the environment. God made it that way on purpose, because he wanted to say the true bond, the environment of the branch.

I created all the environment. And in them, in me, he says. Now, God didn't need to do it that way. He didn't need to create a universe to make him happy. God, before you came along, happy God, before I came along, he had joy and fullness and completeness and purpose.

It was all inside of God. He didn't need to create an angel or an archangel. The world gathered together from every age and generation wouldn't be enough to make one priest to worship him as he ought to be worshiped.

The same thing he's ever made all put together. To see himself as a mother hen, he did that to accommodate and gratify our weakness. To make himself visible. What's suggested in John 15 under the figure of the vine and the branches is fully developed in the epistles of the New Testament.

Union with Christ in the New Testament

Just a little more donkey work with you and try to stay with me on this. 4 ,000 years through 44 books of the Bible, we never had this great revelation. It wasn't until Pentecost. It wasn't until the Holy Spirit came.

This truth that you can't even open the epistles without seeing it. Why is that so prominent in the Bible, in the New Testament? In Christ, that's your environment. That's your element. Christ is your native air.

Christ is your native food. Christ is your native drink. Christ is your native rest. Christ is now your element. You live in him. You move in him. You breathe in him. It's all in Christ Jesus, in the Lord, in Christ Jesus.

We're not just externally connected like two parallel lives. He's got his life. I've got my life. We're together. We're in there. It's not just that we receive his truth, that we preach his gospel. Not just that we're saved from hell and destined for heaven.

That's true. But now it's something wonderful, something new God has done. He's come inside and now he wants to live out his life. This is a glorious thing. Open the New Testament and begin to read. We are partakers of everything he's ever done.

He died. We died in him. He was buried. We're buried in him. He ascended. We ascended in him. He's seated. We're seated in him. He's coming. We're coming in him. We're identified with Christ. He's become our environment.

He's the ground on which we stand. He's the air that we breathe. He's our element now. He's the vine, the true vine. Churches mentioned in the Bible are in Christ Jesus. They're found in Christ, preserved in Christ, saved in Christ, sanctified in Christ, rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus, made perfect in Christ Jesus.

In our duties, in our destiny, how we relate to God, how we relate to people, how we relate to heaven, how we relate to earth. Oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, the fullness of the wonder of that truth.

I'm the true vine. All that's included in that is in Christ Jesus. I wonder if you've ever seen that idea that Christ is your environment. My son Daniel, thanks to Rick Baker, has taken up a sport called diving.

You should see him in his gear. Strange looking guy, strange gloves on him. And he walks real slow and funny. Got a big belt with big lead things on it. Strange creature. I take his environment with him.

His environment to go down into this strange environment. He's somebody who lives, not his element. Bible, Paul says, I am in prison. You never read that. You know what you read? So happy there. You know why?

Every time you look at Paul, he wasn't in trouble. He was in Christ in trouble. He wasn't in the sea. He was in Christ in the sea. He took his environment with him. And so can I. And the wonder of living in this new environment called Jesus Christ.

Abiding in Christ and Prayerful Dependence

I'm the true vine. What did he mean by that? He meant I'm the vine, not you. But he also meant I am the vine. I am your environment. I am your element. I am your life. And everything you do is going to be from that.

Sort of shocked me. He said, if you abide in me and I abide in you, I expected it to say you shall bear fruit. It didn't say that. Said if I abide in you and you abide in me, you ask what you will. And I'll get what's that all about prayer.

You see, God made organic life and he made the environment and he made the organic life to receive. That's all it does. It just receives the environment. It just takes the environments, the great giver and the organic life, just a great receiver.

And it just takes. And it never even asks. And God said that's because organic life is going to pass away and the environment is going to pass away because that's just a picture. The reality is I want you to have life and I am your environment, and that's not going to pass away.

And one of the most wonderful things. What is faith? Reaching out for his environment. That's all faith is. So beautiful that now we can talk to our environment. You can talk to him and these are my needs and he provides.

This is a marvelous. We need to understand what it means to live. But tonight, may God help us find everything I created divine to pick an abundant fullness in me. I am your life. I am your element. I am your environment.

Carry me with and they'll look at you and say, hey, what a stray. Look how he walks. So strange. Peculiar people that we're not doing. The church is on life support. Learn to live from their environment.

They're sick. They're fainting. They're dying all over the place because they haven't learned how the truth and I made it as a picture and we miss it every time we turn around. Give us eyes to see it and begin to learn what it means to have Jesus.

We thank you not for what we think we know this means, but for everything you have inspired it to mean in our hearts indelibly that you are the true mind. Thank you that you're going to do this in a way that far exceeds anything we could ask.