John 15:1-11 (Part 2 - The Fruitful Life)

The Shepherd's Church

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Well, if you remember from last week, well, if you remember from last week, Jesus was engaged in this epic battle between him and the

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Jews. It says in John, right in the first chapter, that he came to his own, and his own did not recognize him.

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And we see later in the book that they turn on him and kill him. We also saw that the reason that this was the case is because that they were a withered, rotten, decrepit vine at the time of the

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New Testament. They were not worshipping God in spirit and truth. They were worshipping their influence. They were worshipping their money.

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They were worshipping their temple. They were worshipping their status. And the majority of the blame was really poured out onto the

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Pharisees. But if you remember, we looked back into the Old Testament last week and we saw that God appointed Judah, God appointed

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Israel to be the vine, to have deep roots into him, to bear fruit that would bless the nations.

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The whole point of Israel in the Old Testament was not to be a special people who lived by themselves and looked down their nose upon everyone else.

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That's what they ended up becoming. The point was is that they would bear fruit and the nations would come.

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Canaan would come. Moab would come. I'm trying to think of all the nations.

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Babylon would come. Egypt would come. That was the point, is that they were supposed to be a place that would point people to the living

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God. And yet, when we get to the New Testament, they're a place that excludes the nations. Jesus even overturns the tables in the temple because they were in the court of the

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Gentiles. The one area on earth where the Gentiles were supposed to come and worship

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God, they had filled it full of industry so that the Gentiles couldn't even come. There was no place for them to bow their head and worship this

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God. So not only were they not giving fruit to the Gentiles, they weren't even giving them a place. They were a withered, dried up, decrepit vine that was not bearing the fruit of righteousness.

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And after all that God had done for her, the point is that she was going to be severed.

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That's why John the Baptist says that the ax is at the root. Because he's saying that the

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Lord, over the centuries, has chopped and chopped, and there was no repentance.

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Now the root has been exposed, and one more swing from the Lord's ax, and they'll be severed.

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That's the point. That's what John the Baptist came preaching, that if they didn't bear fruit in keeping with repentance, they would be tossed into the flames like a withered vine.

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That's why Jesus came giving parables of destruction and prophesying the city's destruction in Matthew 24, and announcing covenantal woes in Matthew 23, and overturning the tables in John 2, because Israel forgot what her fruit was for, and more specifically, who her fruit was for.

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Israel had become fat on the graces of God, lazy and languid in their religion, self -important, buffeted up with pride, and Jesus came to replace her.

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Now, the reason that's true is because, as we said in Genesis 128, that he wants the whole world to bear fruit for him.

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He wants his people to multiply to the ends of the earth. Israel was getting in the way of the mission of God.

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They were keeping the fruit isolated to a little outpost in the Roman Empire, and they hated Gentiles so much that they would not even tell them the gospel of their

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God. And because they were getting in the way, the Lord put them away. How much more so will, as we said earlier, this country, if we get in the way of the mission of God, God will put us away, and Jesus himself puts himself in the place of the vine.

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No longer will people go to Israel to know God. No longer will they have to travel, like Muslims do today, to Mecca.

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No longer will Christians have to travel all over the world to go to Jerusalem to the temple or to be served by Judas Priest or to...

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Not Judas Priest. Sorry, that came out of my mouth a little bit too quickly.

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No longer will we come into the kingdom through the sacrifice of animals, but we will come through the rock of ages, through the true shepherd,

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Jesus Christ, the true high priest, the true sacrifice that brought us in, the final prophet, the one true temple who will usher us into the presence of God.

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The point of Israel's replacement is not that they would be condemned forever, but they would have to come in the same way you and I come in.

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That's why when the Bible or Paul says that Jew and Greek both come in through Christ, they were demoted from being the vine.

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They were given the opportunity to be the branch. Jesus is the vine.

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And that's sort of what we're gonna be talking about today. Jesus is the vine and we have salvation.

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We have hope. We have nourishment. We have our faith only because we abide in Him.

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That's what we're gonna be talking about today is how do you abide in Christ? That's the first thing. What is abiding?

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We don't use that word very often anymore. What does abiding mean? The second thing we're gonna talk about is what does abiding accomplish in the life of the believer?

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And then the third thing that we're gonna talk about is what is a fruitful life? All of us as Christians wanna live a fruitful life.

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Well, there's six things in this passage that teach us what a fruitful life is. And I've went really back to my roots as a

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Baptist and made it into an acronym. Please forgive me. If it helps you, praise

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God. Today we're gonna be talking about fruits. F -R -U -I -T -S, fruits.

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These are the six things that will help us live a fruitful life. So with that, if you will, turn with me to John 15.

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We'll be in verses one through 11. And I want you to notice something. The word abide, take note about how many times you see it.

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And not just the word abide, but abiding kind of language. Like when Jesus says, in me or in you, pay attention to how much this sort of language is in the text, it's astounding.

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It's almost like God's wanting to get our attention. So let's read John 15, one through 11.

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I am the true vine. My father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

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And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which

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I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine.

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So neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches.

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

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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.

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

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

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Just as the father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide in my love.

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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.

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These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

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Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for this text and for the simple sort of categorical explanation that you've brought to it to show us what a fruit -filled life looks like.

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You've not only told us that in connection with you and being bound to you, that we give glory to God and God expects that we will bear much fruit, but you've also showed us what that means and how we are to bear fruit.

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Lord, help us today to see the various different aspects of fruit -bearing that occur in the life of the believer and Lord, I pray that all six of those aspects would be true of everyone in this room.

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Lord, I pray that we would be fruitful people. On top of that, I pray that we would have fruitful families.

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On top of that, I pray that we would have fruitful children that grow up and who storm the gates of hell and who do mighty things for the

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Lord with great confidence and boldness. And even on top of that, I pray that we would be a fruitful church. And Lord, I pray that the ministry and the mission of God would occur in this place, not because of us and our ingenuity and our machinations, heaven forbid, but because you,

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Lord, have breathed life into this community and you are working in this community. You said apart from me, we can do nothing.

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That is true of this church. That is true of every individual here. But Lord, with you, with the power of your

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Holy Spirit, there is much fruit that could be cultivated from a church like this.

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Lord, I pray that you would cultivate great fruit from this church. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. He says the word abide 10 times in this passage, 10 times.

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Jesus is not playing around here. He's really emphasizing this word over and over again, which is part of the reason why

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I felt so justified in doing an acronym. Because Jesus is doing something kind of similar.

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He's using words to get our attention. Abide, abide, abide. And even beyond that, he uses the word in so many times that I want you to be in me, in my love.

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He says, I want you to be in him five times, in his love two times. He is getting our attention that the entirety of the

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Christian life is not about us. It's not about our power or our resolve or our wisdom or our ingenuity or our ability to control and manipulate the situation.

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The entirety of the Christian life is in him, connected to him, receiving from him, dependent on him.

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That's what Christianity is. We're the most dependent people on earth. We can do nothing apart from being connected to our savior.

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Now, what does the word abide mean? He's used the word abide before when he says, behold,

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I go away to prepare a place for you. That's the word abide, abiding place. It's a

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Greek word minnow, like the little fish, but spelled differently in Greek. Minnow means to live with someone.

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It means to dwell with someone. It means to linger with someone in perpetuity. It means to find your home with that person.

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It means to live with them. In the same way that a husband has full expectation that when he and his wife say,

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I do, that they're going to, maybe they go on a honeymoon in today's culture, but after that, they're going back to the minnow.

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They're going back to the dwelling place. They're going back to the house. Being a very strange thing, if after the honeymoon was over, they say, well, it was great, see you next week.

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And they both go to separate houses. The expectation is that they will live together, that they will actually become intertwined with one another, that their lives will become united and one.

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That is exactly what Jesus is saying that he wants to happen to us, is that our lives would become intertwined in him, that we would move in with him, that we would live with him and dwell with him and be with him and rest with him.

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It's an astounding thing. We don't come to church to dwell with Jesus. We dwell with him all week long.

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Now in church, Matthew 18, I do want to clarify this. He does say that he dwells with us in a unique way, in a covenantal way, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't dwell with us all week.

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It just means the intensity gets hotter and better in church.

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Jesus is calling us to be intertwined with him, to build our lives into him, and he's calling us the branch.

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He's calling himself the true vine, and he's saying that we need to be grafted into him, which is an astounding process we'll talk about in a moment.

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He says in verse four, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

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The only reason that you and I have life at all is because we abide in Jesus Christ. You go home, you cut a branch off your tree, a week later, it's dead.

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The only reason we have life is because we're connected to him. That's it, that's it. And if you want to be in, you have to be connected to him.

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That's what Paul's getting at in Romans 11, which I was tempted to share last week, but we're gonna share it this week.

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He's talking about the Jews who were connected to him are severed, which means that they're withered, and the only way that they can be saved is if they're grafted back in.

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Listen to what he says in Romans 11, 17 through 20. But if some of the branches were broken off and you being a wild olive were grafted in among them and become partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.

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But if you are arrogant, remember that it's not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.

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What a wonderful phrase that is. And then you will say, but the branches were cut off so that I might be grafted in.

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It's almost like the Christians in the Roman church were like, those branches were cut off so that we and all our spectacular branchiness could be brought in.

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And Paul is really gonna attack that. He said, quite right. They were broken off, but they were broken off for their unbelief.

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And you stand by your faith. Do not be conceited, but fear. Then he keeps going in verse 21.

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But if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Behold then the kindness and the severity of God to those who fall in severity, but to you,

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God's kindness, if you continue in his kindness, otherwise you will also be cut off.

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He's saying that we have no reason as Christians to be prideful whatsoever. We have no reason to think that we have anything to do with our salvation.

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It is God who has done everything. We did nothing. We've said this many times, but Jonathan Edwards has one of the great lines in Christian history.

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I did, I contributed nothing to my salvation except the sin that made it necessary. I contributed nothing, but the sin that made it necessary.

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And that's not just true of our salvation. It's also true in our sanctification. Once we're saved,

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God doesn't give us a license to do whatever we want. We're still dependent on him. Every moment of every day, we are connected to him.

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And if ever we tried to sever, which there's Bible verses that will cover on that.

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But if ever we tried to sever that connection with Christ, we would wither all the same. We are dependent on him for our salvation.

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We are dependent on him for our sanctification, and we are wholly dependent on him for glorification.

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At every aspect of the Christian life, from election in eternity to eternity in the presence of Christ, we are dependent on him.

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And because of that, he loves us enough to prune us. That's not our favorite part.

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The pruning. Where we get cut, we bleed. Where there's parts of us that are dead that God doesn't want to be there.

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He walks up to us as a faithful vine tresser and he sees that there's some disease in the branch.

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The most loving thing that Christ can do in your life, that God does in your life, sometimes he cuts things out of you.

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Just like a surgeon. Surgeon goes in with a scalpel, a very precise instrument to cut the cancer out of you because it's killing you.

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Yeah, it hurts. Yeah, when you wake up, you've got a scar. You've got a wound that oozes for a little while.

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You have to go through maybe some therapy in order to get over the pain of that. But it's good for you.

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That doesn't belong inside of you. A good vine dresser not only connects you to the vine, but he cuts you and prunes you so that you will bear more fruit, so you will be more healthy.

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Israel was cut off because they did not bear fruit. You and I will not be cut off. We will be cut for more fruit.

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Cut for a purpose. Which means that we can have assurance. Which means that every struggle, every pain, every hurt, every trial is working for you an eternal weight of glory.

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Christianity is the only faith on earth that has an answer for the problem of human suffering.

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It has purpose in the pain. God is using this to make me healthier, more faithful, and to bear more fruit.

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Now I found this by doing a little bit of research about how in the ancient world vines and branches were grafted together.

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And I think it actually, like Christ always does, it's a perfect metaphor for what he's done for us.

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The horticulturalist at that time, or the one who has a vine, he would go looking for the perfect vine. He would plant its roots down deep so that it would have a wonderful bed of soil, maybe near some water.

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He would plant the vine and then he would go and he would grab the branches that he wanted to graft into the vine.

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And he would entirely choose those branches based off of what fruit they were gonna produce.

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He would pick them based off of the aroma, the different qualities, the characteristics.

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He might have four or five different branches connected to the vine that are doing slightly different things from a fruit perspective, but they serve his purpose because he wants a variety of different kinds of fruit for his purpose, for his farm, or for his vineyard even.

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So different branches would be chosen for different purposes, but they would all have the expectation of bearing fruit.

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Now the way that you get them connected with one another is that he would take out his knife and he would slice the branch in a sort of an angular way so that the surface area of the cut was as large as it possibly could be.

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Then he would go back to the vine and he would cut the vine and then he would pair them together and he would bind them up tightly with wrappings and he would leave them there and he would leave them there until fusion began to start happening, to when a little ball of bark even was sort of surrounding it so that it was starting to become healthy and almost like scar tissue on the vine.

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And he would cultivate it and he would work with it and he would not unbind it at all until they were perfectly united together and one.

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What has Christ done for us, dear saints? He came and he chose

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Christ as the true vine. He cut the weed of Israel out and he planted

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Christ as the true and perfect vine and he cut us, you and I who were living in the wildernesses of sin, in the deserts of depravity, he cut us and then he brought us to Christ who was cut on the cross and he bound us to Christ and he united us to Christ and he wrapped us into Christ and he cultivates us over time so that as we grow one with Christ, the expectation is that we will bear fruit.

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And dear ones, he chose you because you're different. He chose you for your peculiarities.

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He chose you for the particular kind of fruit that he intends to produce in you for his purpose.

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Not all of us are gifted in the same ways in the church. Some of us are gifted in generosity.

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Some of us are gifted in evangelism. Some of us are gifted in discipleship and teaching. We all have different gifts.

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But he chose us and cut us away from our old life and bound us to Jesus Christ so that the fruit that God chose for you to produce would be produced through you for the glory of Christ and for the good of God's kingdom.

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Every aspect of this metaphor is completely connected to the way that he has loved you, especially how he was cut on the cross to give you even an opportunity to be bound to him.

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And now our nourishment comes from him just like a branch is nourished by the vine. And of course, he's gonna prune us so that we will bear more fruit.

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But that's the point. We were not saved so that we would bear little fruit.

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We were saved so that we would bear much fruit. He cut Christ and cut us and bound us and wrapped us and united us and fused us so that his fruit would be manifest on his people.

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We often forget that in the church that now that we're saved, we kind of treat that like the finish line, don't we?

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I just got saved. What does that mean? I don't know, I'm going to heaven one day. What about the next day?

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I don't know. We treat it like a finish line event instead of a starting line event. We were united to Christ at the beginning of the process.

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Now, for the rest of our life, we're expected to bear fruit. We have to remember that.

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So that's part one, is what does abiding mean? Abiding means that we've been fused to Christ.

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There's no division. For my plumbers out there, I don't know what it is. You'll have to tell someone else after church what it is because I don't know.

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But there's a chemical that you can put on the PVC pipe. You put the purple stuff to clean it and then you put this squishy stuff and you put the pipes together and it fuses together so that there's no way to break it apart.

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It actually becomes one pipe. Again, I don't know what it's called. It's like magic to me.

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That's sort of what God has done with you and Christ. You and Christ, after you were saved, are almost indistinguishable.

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He has united you to him so that you can't be broken off.

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You can't be severed. But because of that, you will bear fruit.

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If you're a true follower of Christ. The second thing I want us to look at is what does abiding accomplish?

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It accomplishes fruit. How's that gonna happen in my life? What's it mean that I've been fused to Christ and what is that gonna look like?

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Well, the simple answer is that we are going to bear much fruit. This idea of a fruitless Christianity's gotta stop.

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This idea of easy believism that's been around since the 30s and 40s. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about it during World War II.

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This idea of cheap grace that I'm saved and now I don't do anything about it. That idea's gotta die.

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Christianity for so long has been afraid of legalism that we've been allergic to obedience.

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I have never and never will tell you that you have to obey God in order to be accepted by him. That's heresy.

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But I will never also tell you that because you're saved, obedience doesn't matter. We're gonna bear fruit if we're a believer in Christ.

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We're gonna bear fruit if we're a Christian. That's not legalism. That's just good old -fashioned

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Christianity 101. If you're healthy, you bear fruit. If you're not, you're dead. This idea of aspiring to an obedientlessness,

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I think I made that up, sort of faith is ludicrous. It's like in order to protect ourself from being legalist, we prefer dead

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Christianity. I'm dead, but I'm not a legalist. That's gotta go.

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He created us, gave us new life, enlivened our soul, paid for all our sins on the cross, gave us the

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Holy Spirit of God, not so that we could do nothing, so that in him, we could bear much fruit.

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I mean, think about what it actually says about God if you have a fruitless life. God's the master gardener, the master vine dresser.

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If anybody's good at getting vines to produce or branches to produce fruit, it's God. What are we saying about God when we don't believe that our lives are supposed to be fruitful?

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Yeah, God, I know you're powerful enough to create the world and all that, but I'm just gonna do whatever

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I want. Dear friends, if that's your attitude, and I pray to God it's not, I would question your salvation because he does not say that some

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Christians will bear much fruit, and he does not say that an elite class of Christians will bear much fruit.

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He says that if you are connected to the vine, you will bear much fruit.

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So the question is, if you are not bearing much fruit, are you connected to Christ?

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Because again, the master vine dresser knows how to get his branches to produce fruit, and if you're not producing for a season of time, repentance is absolutely in order.

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If you're not producing for a lifetime, you're not connected to the vine because no one who's connected to the vine goes a lifetime of fruitlessness.

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It's serious. That's why he says that if you're not connected, you'll be thrown into the fire. We ought to be more concerned when our life is fruitless than in almost anything else that we face.

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We should have more fear over fruitlessness than financial collapse. We should have more fear over fruitlessness than homelessness.

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Who cares? I'm not trying to be flippant. Who cares if your house burns down and you go into heaven whole with Christ?

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I care if your soul burns down in hell. We can get you another house.

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You can sleep here on the pews. I don't care. I'll give you a key. It's more important that you bear fruit for Christ as a response to the good that he's done in your life.

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It's more important to me that your life is living than dead and going through the motions.

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God did not grant us permission to be fruitless. He just didn't.

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Now, what kind of fruit does God desire that's gonna lead us to the very next part of our discussion?

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There's all kinds of fruit in the Bible. There's the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.

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Those are good fruits. Those are fruits that he will cultivate in you. So that if you have no self -control and like I was as a kid, and you just have to have that thing right away, he'll work on that.

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He'll grow you in that. You're not gonna be perfect at it, but he'll grow you in it. Patience.

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How many of us struggle with patience? All of us. You're not gonna be perfect at it, but you're gonna be growing in it.

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You're not at the destination, but he's leading you in a direction.

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So those are some fruit. Matthew 3 .18 talks about the fruit of repentance. Philippians 1 .11 talks about the fruit of righteousness.

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Proverbs 3 .13 and 18 talks about the fruit of wisdom, how wisdom is like a tree planted by streams of water.

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So there's all kinds of fruit in the Bible, but this passage that we're dealing with gives us sort of a holistic approach.

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Patience is very granular. This passage gives us categories of patience. And again,

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I'm using a acronym to say that these six categories cover every aspect of your life.

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So if you wanna live a fruitful life for Jesus, if you wanna be fruitful, like Genesis 1 says, and multiply, and multiply that fruitfulness into your wife or children, into your family, into generations, then these six things that Jesus teaches us are essential.

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And they begin first with F, faithful in the word. Jesus says, if you wanna live a fruitful life, verse seven, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, then you'll bear fruit.

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He's saying that there is no such thing as fruitfulness in a life that is filled with wordlessness.

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If you're a wordless Christian, you're not gonna be fruitful. Now, you might be wordless for a season.

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You might sleep in, you might ignore the words, you might do all kinds of things. But if you perpetually and for a lifetime ignore the scriptures, you can't be fruitful.

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It's the soil of your faith. It's how the Holy Spirit brings nutrients into your life.

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I remember a pastor told me this one time. He said, the Holy Spirit can remind you of a passage that you've never read before, but he doesn't.

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He reminds you of the passages that you've read and that you've read over and over and over again, and probably the passages you memorized.

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When I was young in the faith, I had memorized like two verses. The Holy Spirit used them every day in every situation because I didn't have any more.

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And then as I started learning more, I got a little bit more. The Holy Spirit was working a little more, showing me a little bit more.

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The Word is so critical to your life that if you're wordless, you will be fruitless.

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If you're lazy in His Word, you will be languid in bearing fruit. You may, if you are half -hearted in this, maybe you'll bear some crab apples and horned melons.

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Have you ever had a horned melon? If there's a candidate for the fruit that was on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the horned melon is one of them.

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It's ugly. And not only is it ugly, it's bitter. It tastes like, I read this,

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I haven't tasted it, it tastes like a combination of cucumber, lime, and awful. Those three.

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If you're languid in the Word, maybe you'll produce some horned melons, but you're not gonna produce the kind of fruit that's gonna build others up, that's gonna nourish other people, that's gonna build

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Jesus' kingdom, that's gonna accomplish, because again, a wordless life is a fruitless life.

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Now, what does that mean for us? Well, if you're single, read the Bible. Read it to yourself.

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Read it with you and friends. Read it with your family. Read it with your mom and dad. Read it with someone who's discipling you.

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Study it, memorize it, obey it, and cherish it. If you're married, do all of those things, but do it with your wife.

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If you're married and have kids, do all of those things, but do it with your wife and your children. Don't neglect the

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Word. It's too important. And remember, He did not die for you to be fruitless, and the way that you'll be fruitful is to be faithful in His Word.

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The second thing, as acronyms go, is the R, reside in godly prayer.

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He says in the second half of John 7, if you abide in me, my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

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Now, this is not blank check prayer, like many in the charismania movement will have you think.

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This is not, if I want a private jet, then I just ask King Jesus and He gives me the private jet.

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This is not that. I used to make a joke about the Ford Raptor, but now they painted it the rainbow color.

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I don't want that truck anymore. But this is treating God like He is a credit card, a debit machine, or like He's the lottery ticket that you've been hoping for so that you can get all the stuff that you've amassed in your mind.

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We all have it. Well, if I just had a million dollars, I would have this, I would have that. That is not what

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God is saying, ask what you wish and you'll have it. That's not. That hermeneutic is blasphemous and is odious in the nostrils of our

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God. What He's saying, you remember, if you abide in me, and my word abides in you, then ask whatever you wish.

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Your wish will change. You used to be carnal. You used to want all sorts of petty things.

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You used to want things that only silver and gold could buy, but as you abide in Him and as you abide in His word, your desires begin to change so that your prayers begin to change so that they begin to look more holy so that your will and His will become aligned.

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This is not a recipe for carnality. This is dwell in the word of God and have your will changed, your mind changed, and then you'll be praying.

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The things you wish to happen in your life will be consistent with the things He wishes will happen in your life, and then

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He will answer your prayers. You'll be praying

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His thoughts. When you prioritize wordfulness in your life, you will grow in prayerfulness, and there's so many ways that this happens.

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I love opening the Psalms and just praying word by word through the Psalms, and I go really slow.

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The, it's not a Lord, He's the Lord. Thank you, Lord, for being the one and only

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Lord. Lord, He's my master. Is, He's living. My, it's personal.

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Shepherd, He's leading me somewhere, and then I just pray these things back to God. You can do that because word -filled prayers honor the

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Father, and think about it, you have 66 books of ideas on how to pray.

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You don't have to be creative. People, people come to me all the time, I don't know how to pray.

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Open up the Psalms, read the words, and say them back to God because He loves His words. That's why we sing

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Psalms here, because He loves His words. When it says, I hate the haters, you never see that at Bethlehem Hills song, but God wrote it, so we sing it.

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The more you're in the word, the deeper, the sweeter, the better, the more lively your prayer life becomes.

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It is unbelievable. If you don't believe me, read The Valley of Vision. You ever heard of that book?

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The Valley of Vision. I've gotten four or five people in here to buy that book. I want everybody to buy that book.

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It's the Puritan's prayer book. These are men who are saturated with the word, and if you poke any page on that prayer book, it'll bleed the

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Bible. It is unbelievable. The Valley of Vision, it's on amazon .com. It's really, really, really good, and it demonstrates that as you grow in wordfulness, you grow in prayerfulness.

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So if you wanna have a fruitful prayer life, get in the word, pray the word.

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The third thing, faithful to the word, residing in godly prayer.

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The third thing is we must undertake biblical discipleship. Jesus says in verse eight, "'My

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

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Did you know that the Father is glorified when you bear fruit? We wanna live a life that glorifies

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God, bear fruit for God. He's saying, that's how I'm glorified by you.

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"'That a withered, sickly, little plant like you, "'when I connect you to Jesus Christ, will bear much fruit, "'the world would laugh at the little twig that you were.'"

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And yet in Christ, the sweetest honey crisp apples, the most delicious

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Florida oranges, are produced in you. God gets great glory when the things that make the world ponder, the foolish things of those world, give him great glory.

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You and I are the foolish things of this world, and apart from him, we can do nothing, but when we're connected to him, our fruit gives him great glory.

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Now, what do I mean by discipleship? Discipleship is not a complicated concept in Christianity.

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It's just an often avoided one. It's not complicated. Discipleship means your life, in every aspect, needs to look like Jesus.

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It means your mind needs to think like Jesus. Your heart needs to feel like Jesus. Your mouth needs to speak like Jesus.

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Your hand gestures on the highway when someone's cutting you off need to be like Jesus. It's learning how to do everything that Jesus commanded.

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Matthew 28 says, "'Go in all the world and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything that I've commanded.'"

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We're not just teaching theological points. Discipleship's teaching robust obedience.

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It's how does my life become conformed to Christ? It's like I'm an apprentice. If you're in the trades, you become an apprentice underneath someone who knows how to do the job, and they teach you and they mold you so that at the end of it, you become a journeyman.

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And then eventually you become, you know, a full licensed plumber or electrician or whatever it is. Your job as a disciple of Jesus is to behave like him, think like him, walk like him, talk like him, so that your life begins to look like him, so that your decisions are made like he would make them, so that your thoughts are like his.

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You speak like him, you sing like him. If you want a fruit -filled life, you gotta be faithful to the word, you gotta reside in prayer, and you gotta undertake biblical discipleship, which means becoming like Christ in all of life.

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That's the third thing. The fourth is that we would be immersed in God's love.

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I didn't say sprinkled. This is a sprinkled church, as far as baptism goes, immersed in God's love.

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John 15, nine says, just as the father has loved me, I have also loved you. Abide, dwell, sink down, and drown in my love.

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Did you know that was a command that you're supposed to be that deep in God's love? Romans says that you cannot be separated from the what?

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The love of Christ. It doesn't say that, therefore, you're not gonna be separated from Christ.

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Yeah, that's true, but you're also not gonna be separated from the love of Christ, which is astounding.

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God wants you to dwell in, to drink deeply in, to be saturated by, to stand under the

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Niagara waterfall of his love. Don't live outside of the love of Christ.

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So many problems happen in our life when we live outside of the love of Christ, where we go sleeping in the back alleys of depression, and we give ourself excuses to stay there.

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When we stay over with the twin mistresses called Fear and Dread, and we lay there.

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When we shack up with shame and doubt, or we visit the tents of despair, or we go bumbling through the wilderness of bitterness.

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What you need, dear Christian, is a permanent change of address card to stop dwelling in those awful places, and to dwell with Christ in his love.

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Focus on it. How do you focus on the love of Christ? It's not Eastern meditation where you hum and you empty your brain, it's you fill your brain.

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How do we dwell in the love of Christ? Look to him. Look to what he did.

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Look to the fact that for the joy set before him, he was bludgeoned for you, that he walked up the hill of Calvary for you, that he was nailed to the cross for you, that he was suffocating on that cross for you, that he died and breathed out his last to purchase you, that he was buried to revive you, that he was raised to pull you out with him, that he ascended into heaven to lead you.

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Every single aspect of Jesus's life, look at it, stare at it.

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I've had anxiety before, but listen, you can't live there. We can't give ourselves excuses to say, this is just how

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I am. This is my genetics. This is the way my brain works. Stop and look to Christ.

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Look to the risen savior and say, Jesus, I love you. I love you, what you've done for me.

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That heals your heart. Jesus did not say I want you to abide in your depression.

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I know it's hard. I've struggled with it my whole life. He doesn't say I want you to abide in your anxiety and bitterness and frustration and fear and grumbling and gossip and everything else.

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He wants you to abide in his love, so it's worth fighting for. The question is, are you fighting?

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One of the best questions that someone ever asked me, because I said I'm struggling with X, and they said, are you?

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Are you struggling? And I was like, yeah, I deal with it every day. No, no, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. You are feeling this thing, but are you fighting against it?

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Because you just said you're struggling. Are you actually fighting? Or are you laying there and a victim, which is what

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I was doing at the time, and then saying I'm struggling against it? No, I wasn't. How many times do we give into things that we shouldn't give into and we quit fighting for the things that we ought to be fighting for?

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We ought to fight for the experience of the love of Jesus Christ in our life. Because he told us that he wants us to abide in his love.

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Dear Christian, reject your fickle heart because it's gonna lie to you. Defy your wimpy emotions because they're too shallow.

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Rebuff your cowardly affections and look to Christ. Look to the one who hung upon the cross for you and rose in glorious triumph for you, and you'll bear much fruit.

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Faithful in the word, you reside in prayer, you undertake discipleship, and you immerse yourself in the love of Christ.

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You will bear much fruit. The fifth thing that we must do is we must toil for obedience.

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Jesus says in verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept the Father's commandments and abide in his love.

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One of the most powerful tools in the hand of a Christian is obedience. He's saying if you keep my commandments and abide in my love.

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Ugh. No, he says if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Did you catch that?

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If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, which means that if you perpetually don't keep his commandments, you will struggle abiding in his love.

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How often do we feel dejected, frustrated? Maybe we feel like we're a million miles away from God.

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Ask yourself the question, is the problem with me God, is he just failing to give me his love right now?

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Or is the problem me? I'm not obeying his commandments, therefore, I'm not abiding in his love.

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See, many times the problem is that we become lackadaisical in our obedience. Jesus reminds us that more comfort, more assurance in our faith, more experience in his love will come when we have the faith to obey him.

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Again, I'm not saying that God loves you more if you obey him more, that's not what I'm saying.

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I'm saying you will love him more if you obey him more. You will experience his peace more if you obey him more.

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You will experience his joy if you obey him more. And if you don't, you won't. I'm saying that your experience of God improves as you trust him in obedience.

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So that if you obey sparingly, you will experience him sparingly. Obedience is like the fertilizer of the

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Christian faith. If you don't add it, your growth will be stifled.

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And it's something that you can do. Repent and believe. Go and sin no more and obey, and your experience will improve.

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If your heart's sick today, if your experience is, I feel like God's a million miles away, okay.

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Do what David did in Psalm 139, seek me, O Lord, and find the impure way in me so that I can repent,

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I can turn, and I can obey you once again. I promise you, your situation won't change probably, but your experience will.

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That's the problem with the Pentecostal church. If you obey, then your situation will change.

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No one said that in scriptures. If you obey, your experience will change, and that's the difference.

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The final thing is that we must savor his great joy. If we're faithful, reside in godly prayer, undertake biblical discipleship, immerse ourself in God's love, and toil for holy obedience, then we will savor his joy.

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He says in verse 11, these things I've spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that my joy may be full.

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Did you pick up that he said full? He didn't say that my joy will be trite.

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He didn't say that my joy will be like a crumb. He didn't say that my joy will be glass, half -empty kind of joy.

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He said that my joy will be full in you, that it will go from the top of your head, whether it's covered or not, with hair or not, to the bottom of your toes.

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His joy will work itself into every thought, every inclination, every affection, every decision, and ultimately, that's how the world will experience who

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God is. Because when they were feeding Christians to lions, it was the joy that was compelling.

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When they were murdering Christians in the streets, in Ephesus, in Philippi, it was their joy that was compelling.

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Today, as Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria or in North Korea, or as they were sent to the slaughter in World War II and they were singing hymns, and the

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Puritans were being set on fire for their faith and they were singing songs of praise, it's the joy that's compelling to a broken and fallen world.

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Remember, Jesus is the vine. We are the branches.

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Our purpose as Christians is to be connected to him, to bear much fruit, and our fruit is not for us.

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Our fruit is so the nations will see the glory of God and that they will come. So be faithful in the word.

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Reside in prayer. Grow in it. Sit in it. Live in it.

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Undertake discipleship. If there's an area of your life where you're not being discipled, repent, grow in it.

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Immerse yourself in God's love. Don't give yourself excuses to live in your toxic fields. Live in the love of Christ.

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Toil for holy obedience and savor the joy that is only available in Jesus. If you do that, you will not only be the happiest toe -curling people on earth, but your life will bear much fruit and even the nations will have to cry out, look at their

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God. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that comprehensively you have bought, paid for, and purchased us.

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You didn't just purchase our soul so that we could be saved and yet live like hell on earth.

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You purchased our mind. You purchased our heart. You purchased our hands, our feet, our wills, our emotions.

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You purchased all of us. And you purchased all of us so that all of us will bear much fruit.

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Lord, I pray that everyone here today would take a moment and examine the state of the fruit.

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Lord, all of us could bear more. All of us can repent more and all of us should.

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But Lord, we're not talking about a destination. We're not talking about perfection. The question,

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Lord, I pray that you will help us all wrestle with is are we bearing fruit at all? Are we bearing fruit that demonstrates that we're connected to Christ?

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Are we bearing fruit that gives great glory and honor to God? Are we bearing fruit by abiding in your word, abiding in prayer, abiding in obedience, abiding in joy, abiding in you?

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Are we bearing fruit that demonstrates that? Do the nations and the people around us see that?

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Or are they starving like the Gentiles were with Israel because there was no fruit?

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Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, bring repentance. And by the power of your Holy Spirit, bring joy.

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And Lord, let no one walk out of here today glum. Let us walk out of here with the joy that's full in Christ.