Shadows to Substance Conference (Day 2 Dr. James White) JESUS: THE TRUE VINE

Well, thank you very much.

It is an honor to be here.

I'm very thankful that I have survived driving across the United States

basically.

In fact, I ended up in Georgia for a while.

I'm not sure how in the world that happened, but my clocks changed and

everything is very strange.

But here we are and obviously, I'm also, the number of you are

I'm sure a little bit upset that I am preaching from my brand

new Jeffrey Rice rebind up here.

But yeah, well, I've actually lost

track.

I think I've got about 10 now.

I think I've got about 10 because, well, see, I didn't bring it with me,

but I have a two -volume Greek Septuagint.

Is that the only Greek Septuagint you've ever done?

Well, he says yes.

I asked Jeffrey to do a lot of weird things, and sometimes he's like, brother, that's enough.

That one's beyond me.

But no, I don't know whatever moved you, but you

can thank Kofi and Derek Melton, because those two good friends of mine and they posted

pictures of your work.

It was all plot.

Okay.

All right.

They haven't told me that.

They haven't told me that.

But I had two friends and I saw these beautiful Bibles, and I had had a place that did it,

and then they started to disappear.

The guy that did it, I think, had a brain aneurysm or something, poor guy.

So I wanted a Greek New Testament done, and I think you put special effort into that,

brother, because it's still one of your best jobs.

So anyway, I'm very thankful to be here, and you can pray for me as I'm going back,

because my goal, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it, I'm keeping my eye on the weather.

You have weird weather around here, by the way.

I just thought I'd mention that to you.

Pulled in, it was 73 degrees, and then it was snowing this morning.

So it's great.

But I'm going to try to get all the way to Salt Lake City by Friday, which is

pretty long days, because my son -in -law, Eric Yeager, is doing a debate

in Salt Lake City with another friend of mine, Zach Lautenschlager, who

is a member of the OPC in Magna, Utah, where I've preached many, many, many

times.

Brother Wallace is the pastor up there.

And they're going to be doing a debate on who is in the new covenant.

And my son -in -law has done more reading on covenant theology than I have, but this will be his first debate,

and tomorrow's debate here will be my 180th.

So I've done a few of them, but I want to be there for Eric if I can possibly be there, but it all depends on,

you know, the stuff called snow.

I have a very nice four -wheel drive truck, but I'm not stupid enough to drive it with a fifth wheel in the back in snow.

So there you go.

If you turn in your Bibles, please, to John chapter 15,

I noticed in my preparation that I had written an article in 2001

in response to a Jehovah's Witness on this particular text.

It's hard to realize.

You're coming up on, like, you know, a quarter of a century ago.

When did I write that article?

Oh, a quarter of a century ago.

Yeah, okay, all right.

Most of my life is going to be that way, and I'm very thankful for having had all these opportunities to do so, but

keep your finger in John 15 and also put your finger in Mark chapter 4 because I

will make the argument that these two need to be read together if we're going to have a proper

understanding of what is being said.

But let's ask the Lord to bless our time and look to God's word.

Father, during this time, we do ask that you would focus our minds, you would keep us from distraction,

and, Lord, when we finish this time, that we would be more like Christ because we have learned more about his

word and about his message to us.

We thank you for your spirit.

We pray that he would be with us at this time, for without the spirit, we can do nothing.

We pray in Christ's name, amen.

I love the Gospel of John.

It is a gospel that if you follow along and you look

at the flow of argumentation, so often John will repeat

themes that he has introduced earlier.

It's very, very, it's put together intentionally to

allow you to look at certain truths in God's word and then

look at it from this way and then see it from this direction and see it from all sorts of different perspectives.

And in John chapter 15, if we're looking, we're thinking about the book, we know

that this is past the point of the end of Jesus' public

ministry, which is John chapter 12.

And so now we have the personal ministry to the disciples beginning in chapter 13.

And we've had the supper in chapter 13.

We've had that, to me anyways, amazing situation in chapter 13 where

Jesus said in verse 18, I do not speak about all of you, I know the ones I have chosen, but that scripture may be fulfilled.

He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.

From now on, I am telling you, before it occurs and when it does occur, you may believe that

I am.

It's ego, I, me.

That is, that is a, John 13, 19 is a

citation from Isaiah 43, 10, which by the way is where Jehovah's Witnesses get their name.

Isaiah 43, 10, you are my witnesses, says Jehovah, says Yahweh.

And here Jesus is quoting from that and making application to himself in the very

verse that Jehovah's Witnesses use for their own name.

They deny the deity of Christ.

The verse they use actually teaches the deity of Christ.

It's something I would, well, the Witnesses actually came by my house about a month ago.

I about fainted.

They haven't come by my house in forever.

I had a big old black X on that thing.

But they started going door to door again.

I think they lost their maps from COVID.

And so they came to my door.

It's like, hi, how you doing guys?

And so I shared with them John 13, 19 and they haven't come back.

But I'm hoping that they will at least consider what I showed them from there.

But so you have the Lord's Supper in John chapter 13, and

then 14, 15 and 16 then becomes this,

well, it obviously comes right before the High Priestly Prayer, chapter 17, which transitions us

into the betrayal, trial, so on and so forth.

So we know where we are.

So this is the height of the final words to the disciples.

And we know that 14 and 16 are going to give us some of the,

well, it is the longest sustained

biblical teaching on the Holy Spirit in all Scripture.

And so right in the middle of it, it almost seems like a bit of an interruption that you

have this discussion of Jesus as the true vine, which then goes into the commandment of

love and then the hatred of the world at the end of chapter 15.

But it's not an interruption at all.

And of course, when we recognize that what Jesus is teaching us is the Spirit

is going to be the means by which I am going to remain present with you.

I'm going away.

And in John chapter 14, you have, you know, I'm going to go away.

If you had loved me, you would rejoice because the Father is greater than I am.

And that was all really a rebuke of the disciples because they were thinking about themselves rather than Jesus, who

is getting to go back to the place of glory that was his before.

The Father is in a higher position than the Son is.

The Son has voluntarily put himself in that place of humiliation.

And so the Spirit is going to come and the Spirit is going to be the means by which the Father and the

Son make their abode, make their presence with believers.

And so chapter 15, and of course, we know chapter and verse divisions were added over

time.

They were not part of the original text.

Chapter 15 then really does not break up the flow because once you get into

chapter 16, you've got warnings from the Lord, more about the Spirit, the overcoming of the

world.

How do we do all these things?

How is it that the church is to prosper and survive without Jesus in her

midst?

Well, we have Jesus in our midst via the Holy Spirit of God.

And so when we come to the issue of the true vine, as you are probably well aware,

there has been a tremendous amount of argumentation and conflict

over the interpretation and understanding of this text.

And especially amongst those who would say that salvation is a temporary thing that is

dependent upon human accomplishment and human addition,

would say, see, here in John chapter 15, you have branches that are

cut off and they're burned, but they were in Christ and so they were true Christians and so on and so forth.

And so this would be connected together with Hebrews chapter 6 and things like this.

It is fascinating to me that in almost all these passages where you have that kind of utilization, when you

actually look at everything that's said in the text, those texts are actually teaching pretty much the exact

opposite of what those folks are trying to glom onto.

I think of Hebrews chapter 6, and when I think of Hebrews chapter 6, you know, the

first few verses and apostasy and it can't be renewed, repentance, everything else.

Almost nobody ever thinks of Hebrews chapter 6 and thinks of the last few

verses.

You should.

You know what's at the end of Hebrews chapter 6?

We have an anchor that goes into the holy place.

And it just, it's just amazing.

I mean, it's wonderful to have chapter and verse division so you can find verses faster.

The problem is in our minds, it cuts everything up.

It chops everything up.

You don't see the flow of the text.

I think the way that people in the past were able to, were able to do so.

So just the section that we're going to be looking at today, let's, let's, let's look at it.

And then I want to add Mark chapter 4, because I really believe once we

look closely, you're going to see that the parable of the soils and

what Jesus is saying about himself as a true vine, they're, they're directly related to one another

in Jesus' teaching.

So Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine grower, or literally it's a farmer.

The, the, the Greek term refers to a farmer.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that bears fruit, he cleans it so that it may bear more fruit.

You are already clean because the word which I have spoken to you.

Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit from itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you

abide in me.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

Just as the father has loved me, I have also 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 so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be

complete.

And so here is Jesus' teaching on the vine and the branches.

And as I said, I want to point the parallels out in Mark chapter 4.

And you know, given how short the Gospel of Mark is,

isn't it amazing the amount of space that Mark gave

to the parable of, I think it's the soils, some people call it the parable of the sower,

but I think it's the parable of the soils.

I mean, very lengthy portion of the Gospel of

Mark given how short it is, dedicated to just this one story.

And then he began to teach again by the sea.

And such a very large crowd gathered to him that he got into a boat in the sea and sat down.

The whole crowd was by the sea on the land.

He was teaching them many things in parables and was saying to them in his teaching, Listen to this, behold, the sower went out to sow.

It happened as he was sowing, some seed fell beside the road and the birds came and ate it up.

And other seed fell on the rocky ground where it did not have much soil and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of soil.

And after the sun rose, it was scorched.

And because it had no root, it withered away.

Another seed fell among the thorns.

The thorns came up and choked it and it yielded no crop.

And other seeds fell into the good soil.

And as they grew up and increased, they were yielding a crop and produced 30, 60 and 100 fold.

And he was saying, he who has ears, let him hear.

Now we know he then gives an interpretation of this following thereafter.

But what I want you to see is in both situations,

you have those which bring forth fruit and those

which do not.

And for example, when it says immediately in verse 6,.

And after the sun rose, it was scorched.

Because it had no root, it withered away.

The exact same term that is used in John chapter 15 of the branches that do not abide

in the vine.

They wither away.

It's exact same term.

And so it's actually a technical term.

So it seems fairly obvious that when Jesus was speaking and he

utilized frequently this kind of horticultural example, that he's

using the same language.

Now I'm not going to exegete Mark chapter 4, but I am just going to emphasize this.

Mark chapter 4 warns the disciples about what they are

going to be facing when they go into ministry.

And it's exactly what we do face.

And it's something that I think we really need to think about and live in light of.

Especially when you're dealing with a difficult context and a difficult society

where we work and we work and we work.

And finally when someone shows a, they

make a decision, they start coming to church, they profess faith in Christ, and maybe they had a really

rough life.

And so we're very, very excited.

And they're consistent and they want to do all sorts of things.

The temptation for a lot of us is, you know, by week three we're talking about deacon, and

by week six an elder.

And we're just so excited to see anything like that at all, right?

You know, when you're dealing with the kind of world we're dealing with today.

And then a year later, 18 months later, they're gone.

And we look to ourselves and we go, hey,

what did I do wrong?

Was there something more that should have been taught to this individual?

Was there something more we should have offered?

We look at all these things.

Then we have some people that are in our churches for a longer period of time.

I especially.

The sad thing about being in ministry for as long as I've been in ministry now is you have an entire

list in your mind of the men and women that used to

break bread with you in the supper and are now walking in the ways of the world.

And you can't get those faces out of your mind.

And don't even bother trying.

It's not going to happen.

And when you consider that and then listen to this parable, you realize the

Lord warned us.

The Lord gave us instruction.

Because when you sow that seed, it goes all over the place.

And yes, much of it ends up on the hard, rocky soil and it's on

the path on the side there and the birds come and eat it up and it's gone like that.

I think of how we would, for years, we would go out to the Mormon Easter pageant in Mesa

and at the end of the night, we'd be walking back to our cars and we spent hours, I mean, man, back then,

we would do six nights.

By the sixth night, you're a horse.

Because back then, Mormons actually wanted to talk to you.

Now, you have to almost get them into a death hole to even get them to talk to you.

And we'd be walking back to the cars and there'd be one of my tracks.

Down on the ground, it's got footprints all over it.

And we started calling them fallen warriors.

They were the fallen warriors.

And I remember one year, this one missionary did everything in his power to get as many tracks

out of people's hands as he possibly could.

He'd show us how many he had in his jacket pocket, this type of thing.

And I'm going, oh, the responsibility there, son.

But that's what's going to happen.

You throw it out there and some of it's eaten by the birds immediately and

nothing happens.

But then there's the other soils.

And you get immediate reaction.

Doesn't last.

And then you get some others.

It's a slower reaction.

And then the world comes along.

And we were warned.

Even when it falls into the good soil, there's 30, 60, and 100 -fold increase.

And so, that's not a part of my responsibility.

I can't determine.

I can't look into people's hearts.

I wish I could.

It would be so easy to stand there on the street corner with the tracks and going, nope, hold on to that one.

There goes the rubber bait.

Okay, oh, there's a good one there.

You'd never waste a track.

It would be great.

Your printing costs go down.

It's wonderful.

It doesn't work that way.

It doesn't work that way.

And so, we've been told that there are going to be those

who are going to put forth leaves.

They're going to look like, oh, yes, this is great.

We've been praying for more growth.

And boy, this guy looks like he's just….

And Jesus warns us.

There are going to be people.

They're going to confess Christ.

They're going to confess his name.

They're going to show up.

They're going to look like they've got all sorts of growth, but they never have.

Fruit.

It's just like that tree.

Remember the fig tree?

Comes the fig tree.

It's got leaves all over it.

Start looking through the leaves.

No fruit.

What does Jesus do to it?

Curses it.

Come back later.

It's dead as a doornail.

Looked good.

Nothing there.

The key in the parable of the soils was fruit.

Every….

There was growth.

In some, no growth.

Birds take the seed.

In others, there's growth.

No fruit.

Dies.

We get to the vine and the branches.

We have the exact same situation.

The exact same situation.

Except this time, instead of warning the disciples about what they're going to be experiencing

as they are sowing the seed, now the issue is in speaking directly to

them in the context.

And I think that's why it's sandwiched between 14 and 16.

Spirit's coming.

The Spirit is being sent by the Father and the Son, and the Spirit will convict the world,

and all these promises are being made, and right in the middle of that, you have this.

Story.

And it's directed to the disciples.

Notice he doesn't use generic language and say, and you need to teach the people that if they do

not abide in me, they will not be able to do anything.

No.

He says, he does say, I'll take that back, if anyone does not abide in me, but he specifically says,

I am the vine.

You are the branches.

He makes direct application to them as the first people who are going to

be receiving the Spirit of God.

And they need to understand that that's, the relationship of the Spirit

to the Son and to the Father is so intimate that this is not some lesser thing.

This is the very means by which they are going to be able to abide in Christ.

It's not by what they do, it's going to be by the work of the Spirit of God within them.

So when we keep that in mind, we realize where chapter 15 is, we can somewhat avoid the

tendency that so many people have to look at a passage like this, and again, prescriptive,

descriptive.

Are we prescribing how something is to be done, or are we describing the means by which it's going to be done?

And when people come to the Word of God, and they have their

traditions, and they have been taught in a particular fashion, it's very easy for them to look at texts like

this and go, see, it's up to me.

I have to abide in Christ.

Well, that's true as far as it goes, but how does that happen?

Are you saying that it's your righteousness, your works, your, you know, if you make it to the

end, you were better than somebody else?

You were more righteous than somebody else?

You had a better insight into things than somebody else?

I don't know how anybody who is in any of these systems that are anything less than

work salvation systems, how they come to any other conclusion than the people that get to heaven are just simply the better people than the people that

didn't make it.

And that means in that final day, when you look at it, it's like, I'm really glad God made it available, but the reason I'm here

is He made it available, I worked the system properly, and the rest of the people didn't.

Therefore, who's to, who's to be thanked?

God made it available, but I'm the one that worked the system.

That's, that's not the message of the New Testament.

It's certainly not the message of this parable.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.

So, He is the source.

Don't, we have, we have, we have heard this so many times, and we have listened to it so

many times, that we often miss just how

weighty Jesus' words are.

There's so many things He said that no prophet,

no apostle, no great religious leader could ever have said

without it being utter blasphemy.

Put these words in the mouth of Moses, David, Abraham,

Isaiah.

Can you imagine?

I am the true vine, all through John, you have

these I am sayings.

Now, you have two kinds of I am sayings.

You have the I am sayings, there's no predicate.

So, John 8, 24, 8, 58, 13, 19, and 18, 5 through 6, where it's just simply,

ego, I am, I am, and that goes back to that phraseology in Isaiah and other places, and it's

a divine.

Name.

But then you have a predicate, I am the true vine.

I am the door.

I am the lie of the world.

I am the true bread, and so on and so forth.

And they're all focused on Jesus.

And we're so used to that that we sometimes don't realize

how startling this must have.

Been.

When he says it to the people in the world especially, now, these are the disciples.

They've been walking with him.

They've seen him walk on the water.

They've seen him break the bread and feed 5 ,000, and so by now you would hope it would be settling

in, you know, even though they weren't very quick to get to it, and we aren't.

Either.

Every time, every time I feel like looking at the disciples and going, really, you haven't figured this out yet?

Then I realize, yeah, and how many times has God taught you the same lesson over the past 40 years?

More than 40 years for me.

Good grief.

Fifty -six years?

And you think, oh, I've got it, Lord.

You've brought me through it.

I've got this one figured out, and two years later you're remembering, you're learning.

It again.

I hate to tell you, it just keeps going that way.

All you young Christians are going, I'll get it all figured out.

No, no, no.

Okay.

The Lord has a way of doing it.

Okay, again, the point being, these are exalted words from the Savior.

There's no apology for making himself central, and isn't it interesting?

What was John 6 about?

John 6 was about the centrality of Christ.

Eat my flesh, drink my blood.

If you don't, what?

You have no life in you.

How is that different than what we have here?

It's not.

Christ is the source of spiritual life.

So here's just a different mechanism for saying the same thing that he said in John chapter 6, and what was the

result in John chapter 6?

All of the false disciples turn around and walk away.

Turn around and walk away.

They had seen the feeding of the 5 ,000.

Wow.

Boy, this guy would be neat to have around when you're fighting the Romans, man.

We don't have to have supply lines, you know, wherever we are.

Instant food.

This is, ooh, this is awesome.

Great, great, great somebody to follow here, right?

Now, outside of the eyes and views of the

crowds, speaking to the disciples alone, we have a re -emphasis

on the fact that there is only one source of life for the follower of Christ, and that is

Christ.

There can be nothing else.

He's the true vine.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he cleans it so that it may bear more fruit.

Now, let me remind you something.

This is where context is so important.

What happened in chapter 13?

What happened in chapter 13?

Who goes away?

Judas.

Now, if you had watched Jesus and the disciples walking around, if you had

watched when he sent them out doing ministry, you would have seen Judas,

and you would have gone, there's one of Jesus' people.

That's a person in Jesus.

That's in his group.

He's one of the 12.

And so it's in the midst of that that Jesus says, every branch in

me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

Hmm.

We know what happens to Judas.

And can you imagine what it was like

between the cross and the resurrection for the apostles?

They don't know what to do.

They don't know what has happened.

And they're also dealing with the reality that one of their own has betrayed them and was a part of what has happened.

Those were dark days.

Dark hours, I guess, if we really wanted to consider it.

And so you have this one who looked like he was in him, and he's

been taken away.

And every branch that bears fruit, there's the key again, every branch that bears

fruit, he cleans it so it may bear more fruit.

He prunes it.

He does not allow it to have all sorts of excess growth because he wants the focus to be

upon the bearing of fruit.

The point is that the father is in perfect harmony with the son

in dealing with his people.

And we're going to discover that the mechanism whereby this is going to take place, the promise that's going to be

given to us, is the Holy Spirit of God.

So he says he cleans it so it may bear more fruit, and then he uses the same term to say, you are

already clean because the word which I have spoken to you.

Did Judas not hear the same words?

He did.

That's what they'd be thinking.

Judas heard all these words.

He was there by the seashore when Judas had given the parable initially over in Mark 4.

He was there.

He was at all of the apostolic meetings.

He was one of us.

He heard the words, but you see, the words have to have

ears to hear.

There has to be a spiritual work of the Spirit of God within an individual, and that's why

you can have two people to sit in the same pew, hear the same sermon.

And one goes out and is broken and is converted, and the other is

only hardened in his rebellion.

It's not up to the preacher to make the difference.

You can't.

You just have to be faithful with what you're presenting.

You, my disciples, are already which I have spoken to you.

Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit from itself

unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

He's already told them, I'm going away.

Now abide in me.

You see why this is central to the promise of the Spirit.

Abide in me.

Remain in me.

Same language is another reason why it's fairly obvious to me that, yes, it's the same John who wrote the,

wrote 1 John, because that is standard language that is found in 1 John as well, in regards to

abiding in Christ and his abiding in us.

And how is he going to do that?

By the Spirit of God.

I am the vine, you are the branches.

He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

So if you have a branch with lots of leaves that is taken out by the vine

dresser and cast away and burned up, then what's the

inevitable conclusion?

What's the inevitable diagnosis that we have to give?

He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit.

So what was the situation with the branches that are taken away?

There is no vital union.

There may be profession from the world's perspective.

There may be connection here in some way.

We certainly in our day have so many people that make profession of faith.

I'm so sad to see what has happened, for example,

this past week in the Synod of the Church of England.

It's sad because of the fact that when I was

traveling globally, I got to minister in a number of Anglican churches.

If you're not aware of this, there are conservative Anglicans.

Not all Anglicans today are like John Shelby Spong.

Any of you remember the debate I did with Spong on homosexuality?

And when I said to him, well, certainly, sir, your position is not anything like that of Bishop

Ryle.

And he said, I'm not familiar with the name.

Where does he minister?

Here you had an Episcopalian bishop that didn't know who J .C. Ryle was, the author of Holiness.

If you've not read the book, you need to.

And who, of course, had been in heaven for quite some time by that point in time.

Those are the liberals.

But there are, you know, J .C. Ryle, we've always recommended his book.

He was a godly man.

He was a conservative.

He's teaching the authority of scripture and justification by faith and all those types of things.

And you've got a bunch of Anglicans down in Sydney, Australia.

They believe all that kind of stuff.

And just today I was chatting with an Anglican friend of mine, a pastor of a

church in Ireland.

In fact, I've debated at his church.

And I said, what are you and your congregation going to do in light of

what's happened in Canterbury?

They voted to provide blessings for same -sex marriages.

And he said, we continue on.

He mentioned some of the conservative organizations they're going to be aligning with and stuff like that.

The African bishops, by the way, are just going to tell Canterbury to go soak its head in a bucket of water.

And they'll do it with a wonderful African accent in the process.

It's great.

Those Anglican bishops in Africa, they are just rock -ribbed solid.

It's wonderful.

But it's still sad to see.

I don't know about you, but when the queen died, wow, there was a lot of gospel in that funeral.

It was amazing, the gospel readings and how biblically oriented it was.

Wonderful.

But that's speaking of a time that has long passed for the Church of England as a whole.

It's sad.

And so when you see all of the pomp and circumstance,

just leaves, leaves, leaves everywhere, and then you peer through the leaves, fruit's gone.

There's no fruit.

It's a tragedy.

It's a tragedy, but what will inevitably happen?

The Vinedresser will take care of it.

Maybe not in our time frame that we would like, but the Vinedresser will take care of it.

They will take out those vines.

If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast

them into the fire, and they are burned.

Now that's judgment.

And God's speed of doing judgment isn't necessarily as

fast as ours.

There's no question about that.

But if you go over to the RV park where I'm parked right now, where my fifth wheel is

sitting, and you go around back, you can get these for

about 29, 39 bucks on Amazon.

I have this LED, I have a scrolling LED sign.

I've got one on the back of my truck, and I've got one in the back window of my RV.

And I've got it so that it runs all the time.

And it was annoying yesterday because I'm driving

along and this car is passing me, and then it slows down and then

goes back and sits there, and I know what's happening.

They're reading my sign.

I need them to get past me.

But then again, maybe the Lord needed them to read my sign.

I don't know.

But I have Acts 17 .31 scrolling all

night long.

I cannot tell you how many people I see walking by with their dog.

And then they, you know, the dog's going, what?

And then there's Acts 17 .31.

God has appointed a day when he's going to judge the world in righteousness

by a man who he has chosen.

And he's provided evidence to all by raising him from the dead.

It's an incredible text.

And I think it's one of the main things that we need to be communicating to our society.

Because not only do they not have a creator anymore, they don't have a day of judgment.

And the things we see happening, the evil that we see around us, you know what

used to restrain so much of that was a recognition of the coming day of judgment.

And not even the church's teacher preached that anymore.

We don't want to offend anybody.

Well, the fact of the matter is, they are going to be gathered, and they're going to be

cast into the fire, and they're going to be burned.

And that is not just some temporary little slap on the hand.

That is judgment.

And that is judgment upon those who clearly at one point professed something

about Christ.

They made some, these are people who looked religious.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

This is the kind of text that we hear being

abused by all sorts of people who want to try to say that, you know, God has

become our easy way of getting riches and things like that.

When you think of what this means, if you abide in me, and my words abide in you,

ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

It frightens me to think of how many people will take a passage like this They

are not abiding in Christ.

His words are not central to their thinking at all.

But they think that on the basis of that, they can demand of God to

fulfill their lusts and their desires, and God's going to do that.

Let me tell you something.

I believe every single one of the passages of Scripture that say that if you ask anything

according to God's will, He will do it.

I remember, I'm going to date myself here, but starting, as soon as I

got my license, so halfway through the sophomore year in high school, I started driving to school.

They had done this split where they shipped us off to some place that was way, way, way far away from our houses,

and I was sick and tired of driving on public school buses, and all the rest of that stuff that went with it.

So I started driving a beat -up 1972 Buick

LeSabre V8 350.

I think that engine is still running somewhere.

It could not destroy it, but it could only get 12 miles to the

gallon at best.

So I drove to school, and once in a while I'd listen to Christian radio, and this was

right when this guy started to get famous by the name of Kenneth Copeland.

Oh.

Whoa.

Yeah, okay, Kenneth Copeland.

And here I am.

I'm like a junior in high school, and I'm listening to this guy talking about how

God has promised, and he's going to be faithful.

You just need to confess your faith and la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

And back then I understood, because he would say, now whatever you do, don't

destroy your faith by saying, if it be God's will.

That's what he would say.

I remember hearing it.

I remember hearing it long, long ago.

Here's what we must understand.

This promise is true, and every single believer who

dwells in Christ and allows Christ's words to dwell in them

will be so changed by that reality that the true

desires of that person's heart will not be the fulfillment

of physical lusts, will not be the addition

of worldly possessions.

It will be, God, make me more like Christ.

And every person who has ever prayed that has been made more like Christ.

There has not been a one that God has said, nope, I'm not going to sanctify you.

I'm not going to make you more.

Never, ever has happened.

But so many people mock those promises because they've seen them being made a

mockery of by people who call themselves Christians.

And they will be judged.

But for you, if you abide in Christ, and you know what, you can do that

in any situation in your life.

You can abide in Christ in poverty, in hunger, in being

unjustly imprisoned and persecuted.

There are believers all over this world, and they're abiding in Christ, and his words are abiding in

them, and your external circumstances do not matter.

I've told the story before.

I'm looking at the clock here to make sure I don't go over.

I never got to talk to this guy.

But when I was a hospital chaplain, there was a very elderly man.

The nurses said, you've got to see this guy.

He was dying.

He was one of the first pacemaker implants that they ever did

many, many, many years ago.

I guess they'd done a good job.

But he was dying, and he was in the CCU of the hospital I worked at.

And the nurse would say, you just ought to meet this guy.

You come in, you do a blood draw, and he'd say, thank you, honey.

There was always a smile on his face.

And this one nurse said, you know, I talked to him.

I held his hand.

I said, you know you're dying.

He says, oh, honey, I know.

And she said, are you afraid?

And he just looked at her and said, honey, I've talked with the Lord for over 80 years.

Why would I be afraid to go see him?

And so I was in his room.

He had a relative visiting him.

He was unconscious.

I was in his room.

And by that point in time, I had learned to recognize the signs of death.

I was department fellow of anatomy and physiology, so I had the medical background.

And then being in the hospital, I started getting used to reading the monitors and stuff like that.

And I was talking with her, but then I'm looking over, and I go, I think it's time.

Because I could see the heart rate slowing and slowing and respiration slowing and slowing.

The nurse came in.

The nurse was on one side.

I stood with the relative on the other side, held his hand, while he peacefully entered into eternity.

Now let me tell you, there was someone, there is an individual

who was made like Jesus for so long that lying in the hospital

bed with some of your last breaths, you couldn't help but reflect him.

You couldn't help but show him to other people around you.

How many of us have that as our goal?

How many of us have that as our goal?

It's so easy in ministry to get caught up in all the stuff.

And yeah, we've got to have stuff to do stuff.

We've got to be able to.

But it's so easy to get distracted and miss being that kind of

guy that is just a witness by breathing and smiling

and being thankful.

My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be

my disciples.

Fruit bearing, disciple, there's an equal sign in between.

As long as you recognize that, you're not going to become confused by what's going on in this story.

You bear fruit, you're a disciple.

If you're not a disciple, you can stand on your head.

You can glue leaves to your face.

It's not going to make any difference.

You can't produce real fruit.

You can't do it.

And it's sad that in our discernment to even know what fruit looks like.

What is fruit?

We've got something going on in Kentucky right now, right?

Asbury?

I don't know what's going on.

Some of the stuff I've heard is very troubling to me, I'll be honest.

If it's true that the primary people leading this thing

include homosexuals and transgender and all that kind

of stuff, then you know what's going on.

And that would explain why many people said they have not heard any gospel presentation, repentance,

centrality of the cross, all those types of things.

But you see, the world looks at this kind of stuff.

And as long as it's religious, they can.

And the church, likewise.

We have the Word in front of us.

We have Jesus giving us.

What does it mean to have fruit?

Well, it's abiding in me.

And it's, well, verse 12, this is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

No one has this.

He laid down his life for his friends.

And we're going to have the cross and the atonement and everything that 1 John talks about.

I mean, everybody wants to go to 1 John chapter 5.

By this you may know that you have eternal life.

Without ever telling anybody what the this was.

The this was the preceding book, which talked about loving your brother and not having

hatred in your heart and walking in the light.

No, no, no, no.

We can't give any type of objective criteria for what fruit is.

No.

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

And when we get to heaven, we're going to meet a bunch of people

that we had no idea.

We had no idea the fruit that was flowing out of their lives.

My fear is a lot of people are going to see the people who look like they're bearing all sorts of fruit.

And it wasn't real fruit.

Got that text in 1 Corinthians chapter 3.

There's going to be a day.

Wood, hay, straw, gold, silver, precious stones.

That day is going to test what it was.

And there's going to...

If it's not coming from the Spirit of God, it's going to burn up.

It's going to be gone.

It's not going to mean anything.

So I'm not the oldest guy in here.

Coming into this place, I was like, you know, my beard's getting pretty good.

And then I look around here, oh, never mind.

But I am getting up there now.

And I can certainly tell it by all sorts of reliable

information that I don't work as well as I used to.

And stuff hurts and all that kind of neat thing.

My dad died a year ago, pretty much this time of year.

And he made it to 90.

So that's not bad.

That would give me another few Christmases to celebrate, to be sure.

But you know what my main prayer now is?

Lord, let me finish well.

Let me finish well.

Now, most of you are too young to be worried about finishing right now.

But you're going to someday.

It's going to come faster than you think.

And I have just seen so many men, meteoric rise,

flashing across the skies, and then not finishing well.

Man, we could name some names, and there's some big names.

And I'm not talking about, you know, I think we need to be very careful about how we judge others, and by what

standards we do so, and what evidence we accept, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But I just want to finish well.

I don't want to do anything in my life that is going to

not be real fruit.

And I can leave that to God.

That's really, when you think about it, in the end, it's going to be His word,

His judgment that's going to, that's all that's going to count.

Because everybody else is going to shut up.

All the lies will end.

All the personal attacks and snide remarks, all that's going to be silent.

The only thing that's going to matter is what He says.

And He sees our hearts.

He sees our minds.

And so if you, warning young men going into

ministry, you're going to have Christians

stab you in the back.

You're going to have men.

That you have invested your lives in turn on you.

Tell you a story, we'll wrap up.

I was at a huge, huge, huge Southern Baptist church for a number of years.

It's where I was married.

20 ,000 members, we could only find 7 ,000 at any one given time, but there were 20 ,000 members on the roll.

And the pastor of the church,.

Good preacher,.

But he wasn't the pastor of the church.

If you had marriage problems, if you had anything like that, you didn't see him.

He was too busy playing golf with bankers and stuff like that.

There's a man by the name of Harold Green.

Harold Green was the associate pastor.

He wasn't flashy like the other guy.

But if you were in the hospital, it was probably going to be Harold that was going to come to see you.

If you were having marriage problems, it was going to be Harold that was going to walk through with you.

And I was, I was Harold's assistant for a while when I was in Bible college.

And this place had a huge staff.

You know, you know how those places get,.

You know,.

I don't know how many people were on that staff, but there's lots and lots.

Minister of this and minister of that and minister of the other thing.

And one day in front of everybody, because there were secretaries and all sorts of things.

In front of everybody, this one guy just treated Harold horribly.

It was just, it was obvious.

It was, ugh.

And he went into his office and I followed him in.

And I closed the door and I said,.

Harold,.

How do you, how do you put up with that?

How do you deal with what just happened?

Years and years later before he died, I told him this story.

And when I told him,.

He said,.

I said that?

I was wiser than I thought.

Harold was one of the funniest guys you could never out joke.

Harold Green.

He was amazing.

But at that point in time, standing behind his desk, he looked at me and he said,.

Jim,.

Because that's what everybody called me back then.

Thou shalt not.

I do have a webcast and I will use it.

But he said, Jim, if you ever get your eyes

off the shepherd and onto the sheep, you will burn out of the ministry very quickly.

And that's,.

That's the greatest wisdom I can share with you young guys.

You're going to have your hearts ripped out.

Stomped on, stabbed a few times just for the fun of it.

But you got to keep your eyes on the shepherd.

You got to keep your eyes on what you're doing.

You've got to abide in him and let his word abide in you and therefore bear fruit.

Not necessarily that the world will ever see it, but it's my father who is glorified because

my father sees it and he will reward it and he will make the

judgment in the final day.

Let's pray together.

Our grace heavenly father, we do thank you for your word, you're preserving it for us.

And Lord, once again, we all know this text.

We've read it many times before.

And what it tells us today is we must confess to you that very often

we find ourselves abiding in things that will never ever cause us to truly bring forth fruit.

Forgive us, work within us, prune us,

cleanse us from the love.

Of worldly things,.

That we might have the word of Christ to dwell richly in us by the spirit so that the

fruit that we would produce would have eternal value, not to our

glory, but to the glory of our heavenly father.

We pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.