Good evening. It is good to be with you, and we have certainly laid this before the Lord, as I am sure you have as well. It is our desire that we see the Lord together, and I am sure that has been your prayer.
Before we begin, I want to remind you of a principle that is absolutely indispensable: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
How we do praise the Lord for the Bible and for every aid, every assistance, every help, every book, every word study, every atlas, every concordance, every help. But the bottom line, brothers and sisters in Christ, after you have plowed through the helps, you had better come before the Lord as a little baby. You had better say, “Lord, now You unveil Christ to my heart.”
If you do not trust God to illumine your heart to this Book, He will not use what is helpful anymore. We thank Him for the helps, but they are not indispensable. His revelation is indispensable.
The Bible, like our Lord Jesus, is human and divine. We need the human side. We do not encourage or glory in ignorance. We want scholarship. But there is also a divine side, and only God can give that.
Before we pray together, I am going to ask you to turn to Luke 18. We will be in John 15, but for a moment, turn to Luke 18, please. Luke 18, verse 31.
Then He took unto Him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets shall be accomplished unto the Son of man.
For He shall be delivered up unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and shamefully treated, and spit upon:
And they shall scourge and kill Him: and the third day He shall rise again.
Then He gives a list. He will be handed over to the Gentiles. Anything puzzling about that? He will be mocked, mistreated, spit upon. A child can understand that. After they scourge Him, they will kill Him. The third day, He will rise again. Simple facts.
And they understood none of these things; and this saying was hid from them, and they perceived not the things that were said.
Nothing could be simpler than the facts He gave. He will be handed over. He will be beaten. He will be scourged. He will be spit upon. He will die. He will rise. And they said it was hidden from them.
No matter how clear the statement, if God does not reveal it, we do not get it—no matter how clear it is. So I am going to ask you to bow with me and trust the Lord to unveil, to take the veil away from our hearts, to shine the light on the Lord Jesus, and then to give us grace to walk in the light as He is in the light.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee again for this precious Book and the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts, ever to make these plain statements plain to our spirit. Speak to us. Visit us. We know when we see Your face, we will be enlightened; we will be changed.
We ask that You administer grace to every heart, that none would be passed by, but everyone would see the Lord in a living and in a Bible way. We ask this in the all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
If you will turn, please, to John 15. Before we look at this marvelous text, I am sure you are familiar with it—John 15:1-17. How God’s people have been blessed by this passage through the years.
Let me make a couple of introductory comments before we look into the text itself. I am under no delusions as I come before you this evening. I understand that this is a familiar passage, and I also got intelligence that you have already been studying it.
That is one of the blessings I have in my own heart ministering here at Family Ministries, because the text is known in advance. You eat it up and meditate on it, and it just saves me from some donkey work. I appreciate that.
Everybody knows what we are going to talk about. Christ is the vine, and Christians are the branches. We abide in the vine, the vine provides for the branches, and our Father is the husbandman, and He prunes the fruitful branch.
I understand that there is nothing new here, but I am praying that even though I will not say anything you have not heard before, the Spirit of God would anoint it so that the reality of the truth would refresh our souls. It does not have to be new. It does not have to be novel. It is thrilling because it is true, not because it is new.
The second thing I want to call attention to is that I am going to give an outline, but I also know, because of the nature of this chapter—it preaches itself—and because of the nature of the content of this wonderful chapter, there will be overlapping.
In other words, we are going to speak about the true vine, but we have to touch abiding when you talk about the vine. We are going to talk about abiding in Christ, and we will have to talk about how He deals with the vine. We are going to go back and forth, so there will be overlapping.
The last thing I want to say by way of introduction is that even though we are familiar with this passage, we are not familiar with it. You know what I mean by that? Every part of God’s truth has no bottom. There is no end to anything. When you come to this Book, there is just no end to it.
Though there is wonder and mystery here, I have asked God this weekend to enable us to appropriate and enter into everything that He has revealed. I have an idea that sometimes we hide behind mystery as an excuse for ignorance.
Somehow it sounds honorable to sit at the feet of mystery, take off our shoes, and say, “Holy ground,” and not enter in, not claim that. There is mystery here, but we are not going to use mystery as an excuse for ignorance, because it is revealed mystery.
We want to enter in. We do not want to play with things. We are not trying to dazzle anybody with light. I am not going to spring any truth on you. You know what we are going to talk about. But I want to enter in and ask God to help us appropriate everything that He has revealed.
Perhaps we will read aloud those sixteen verses. Maybe a couple of you can read a couple of verses, and someone else, and let us just read John 15:1-16. If you would like to share, stand up and read loudly enough so everyone can get it. Read a few verses, sit down, and then someone else will read through verse 16.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples.
Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.
Thank you. Trust the Lord with me as we go through this, that He will unveil Himself.
Let me give a simple outline of what I would like to cover this evening, tomorrow evening, Lord willing, and then on the Lord’s Day. It is a simple outline, and almost everyone who touches this text divides it up this way.
Tonight, I would like to focus on the heart of God in the statement, “I am the true vine.” Basically, that is what I would like us to see tonight. Why did Jesus say that? What did He mean by that?
By God’s assistance, we want to nail down the revelation of Christ as the true vine. Then, logically, we want to look at all that God intends by the truth, “Abide in Me,” in order that you might bring forth fruit. What is that all about—abiding in order to bring forth fruit?
I think, beyond a doubt, the main message of this section has to do with fruit-bearing through abiding in Christ the vine. We would like to discuss fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and remaining fruit. What is all this that comes out of abiding in Christ? “Apart from Me,” verse 5, “you can do nothing.” What is that all about?
Sunday morning, Lord willing, we will take the next step and ask God to unveil Himself as the vinedresser. What does it mean that, “My Father is the husbandman”? What is pruning? How does He prune? Notice: the fruitful branch. What fruit comes from the Lord out of my life that God cuts off, and why?
We need to see that. We need to see that. So, Lord willing, that is what we are going to look at: tonight, Christ the vine; tomorrow night, Lord willing, abiding in the vine to bring forth fruit; and then, “My Father is the husbandman”—what does it mean when God prunes us, and how does He do that?
John 15:1: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.”
Let me begin by calling attention to the balance of Scripture. The vine is a very precious illustration in the mind and heart of God. He did not use it once, twice, or three times.
We say the tree planted by the water is a picture of the righteous man. We say the rock is a picture of something. We say the brook is a picture. What does the vine picture? In the eternal counsels, way back before there was anything, when God decided, “I think I will create a vine,” why did God say that?
He did not say, I do not believe, “Well, the vine will spruce up the creation. It is pretty. It is nice.” No. God had something in His heart, in His mind. The whole creation is a museum. Everything has its spiritual counterpart.
Let me give you several illustrations. The nation Israel was about to go into Canaan, a land of milk and honey, richness, and pomegranates—the promised land, a picture of Christ. When God wanted to picture it, you remember the story in Numbers 13: the spies went into the land and brought back an earnest of the fruit. What did they bring back? Grapes.
God says, “I had better create the vine and the grapes, because I want to picture the whole promised land.” That one cluster of grapes, carried on a pole between two people, pictured the promised land. God said, “I think I will create a vine.”
Go through the Bible and trace it out: wine, grapes, branch, vine. Oh, it is amazing. You read in Psalm 104 of wine that makes glad the heart of man. When we talk about natural joy, the world talks about wine. That is natural joy.
God says, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit of God.” Natural joy pictures the supernatural joy in the Lord that has no hangover—God’s joy. God says, “I am going to create the vine because I want to picture the promised land, and I want to picture the joy of the Lord.”
When He wanted to picture His people, Israel, Hosea 10:1 says, “Israel is a luxuriant vine.” When He wanted to picture what we love so much—the new covenant—He said it is like new wine in new wineskins.
He did not arbitrarily and by caprice say, “I think I will make a vine.” When He wanted to picture the most beautiful things in His heart, He said, “I am going to create a vine to picture the promised land. I am going to make a vine to picture the joy of the Lord. I am going to make a vine to picture My people, Israel. I am going to use the vine to picture the new covenant.”
When He wanted to picture security and safety, in 1 Kings 4 and other places, He pictured His people sitting under the vine and under the fig tree, safe and secure. The vine is God’s picture.
When He wanted us to know about His love in the Song of Solomon, He said, “My love is better than wine.” It is God’s picture. It is God’s picture of everything.
Even on the negative side, when He wanted to picture judgment in Revelation 14, He sent out the angels to gather the clusters from the vine of the earth to be destroyed. It is all God’s picture.
When He wanted to picture heaven, He said, “I will not drink this anymore with you down here. The next time I drink this, we will be there.”
Every time you see the vine, He is telling us something wonderful and something glorious. When He begins His great ministry on earth and begins His miracles, how does He begin? He turns water into wine. It is not an accident. This is all planned by God.
How precious is the vine. When He wanted us to remember Him, you know the story, He took the cup—the precious blood of Christ pictured by the juice of the grape.
When He wanted to picture His church, He pictured them in John 15 as the vine. When He wanted to picture marriage, the right kind of marriage, He said the woman should be like a fruitful vine.
This is not a mistake. Every place you look—do not read “vine,” la la la. It is one of God’s most prolific pictures, created on purpose to illustrate everything.
You know why? Because the vine is the love of God, the joy of the Lord, the promised land, marriage, union, fellowship, the blood of Christ, the new covenant, and grace. “I am the true vine.” I am everything the vine pictures all through the Scriptures.
No other picture that I know of—except one I may touch on in a little while—goes so far to say so much and to communicate more of God’s precious truth than this vine.
At this point, this is about one day before He dies. What made Him come up with this illustration? What made Him think of it?
Some would say it was because, in New Testament times, when Herod enlarged and beautified the temple, they had this tremendous, elaborate vine over the door of the temple. Scholars tell us it was one of the most prominent sights in Jerusalem. You came to Jerusalem, and you had to stop and see the vine.
Scholars tell us that the clusters of grapes that hung on that vine, made out of gold and gems, were enormous. Some of the clusters were the size of a man, and they would just hang there.
One commentator I read said that in that day it was estimated that just the vine was worth about twelve million dollars. I do not know if it was worth twelve million dollars. I am not fighting for that. I do not care if it was worth one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, but I am trying to show you the prominence of the vine in that day.
Whether that was why He thought of it, whether in the upper room there was an open window and vines were coming in, whether it was because He instituted the Lord’s Table and used the cup and the fruit of the vine, whether they saw vines as they went down into the Kidron Valley on the way to Gethsemane, or whether it was because He was the mighty Creator and had planned it all—“I created the vine to picture this”—whatever the reason, He said that day, “I am the true vine.”
I want to suggest to you, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we press into the heart of God, two things that I think He meant when He said, “I am the true vine.” If God can begin to break these two things on us, if He can dawn this truth on us, we will be ready for what it means to abide in Christ.
If you miss this, you are going to struggle with abiding in Christ. It is so basic, so cardinal, so foundational to understand God’s heart when He said, “I am the true vine.”
I think He meant this: “I am the true vine. You are not.” I think that is what He meant. You are not the vine. I am the true vine; you are not.
The reason I say that is this: we do not read this with a Jewish mindset. All along the way, they were taught that they were the vine. When they put that vine up over the door of the temple and some visitor came, they would say, “See the vine? That is us, the people of God—Israel.”
Turn, if you would, to Psalm 80. The psalmist sang about that. Psalm 80, verse 8.
Thou broughtest a vine out of Egypt:
Thou didst drive out the nations, and plantedst it.
Thou preparedst room before it,
And it took deep root, and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with the shadow of it,
And the boughs thereof were like cedars of God.
It sent out its branches unto the sea,
And its shoots unto the River.
They sang that: “We are the vine that was brought out of Egypt and planted in the land and spread all over.” Then, when they got messed up and went under the chastening rod, look at verse 14.
Turn again, we beseech Thee, O God of hosts:
Look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine,
And the stock which Thy right hand hath planted,
And the branch that Thou madest strong for Thyself.
“Visit this vine.” They were the vine. Israel was the vine.
Isaiah 5:1 speaks of it:
Let me sing for my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching His vineyard.
My beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill:
And He digged it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
And planted it with the choicest vine,
And built a tower in the midst of it,
And also hewed out a winepress therein:
And He looked that it should bring forth grapes,
And it brought forth wild grapes.
What is the vineyard? Isaiah 5:7:
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,
And the men of Judah His pleasant plant.
Everywhere they went, they were the vine. They went into their Bible: they were the vine. God took them out of Egypt. God planted them in the land. They were the choice plant.
Jeremiah 2:21 says:
Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed:
How then art thou turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine unto Me?
Everywhere you turned, they were the vine. When they were judged, the prophet said, “God has laid His vine waste.” It is His vine. It is His people. It is Israel.
The idea of being God’s vine—being cared for by the Lord, watered day and night, watched over—gave them a national pride. They were glad to be God’s vine, and they were glad to tell everybody that they were God’s vine.
Now, it is true that God called them a vine. Why did He choose vines? It is easy to remember: John 15, Ezekiel 15. In Ezekiel, He gives the clue why He used the vine for that. They did not get it, but that is why.
And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, what is the vine-tree more than any tree, the vine-branch which is among the trees of the forest?
Shall wood be taken thereof to make any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?
Behold, it is cast into the fire for fuel; the fire hath devoured both the ends of it, and the midst of it is burned: is it profitable for any work?
Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how much less, when the fire hath devoured it, and it is burned, shall it yet be meet for any work?
Why did God choose the vine? Because it is worthless wood. That is why it was a picture of Israel. They did not get that, but that is why He chose it. You cannot do anything with it.
You cannot make a stool out of a vine. You cannot make a hat rack out of a vine. What can you make out of a vine? Maybe a wreath or a whistle. That is all you can do with a vine. You cannot go to Scott’s Furniture and say, “Give me something in grapevine.” They probably do not carry it.
Ezekiel tried to point out that if the wood of a vine is worthless when it is alive, if it is cut off and put in the fire and burned, what are you going to do with that wood?
Even when Israel was under chastening, when they were cut off, charred, and burned on both ends, they still did not get it. They said, “We are God’s vine.” You missed the point. You should read Ezekiel. You should know why God called you a vine in the first place, but they did not get it.
By the time we come to the New Testament, they have had four thousand years of this: “You are the vine, you are the vine, you are the vine.” There is the vine, the gold vine, the beautiful vine: “I am the vine.”
Jesus comes on this last day and says, “Before I go, you need to know: you are not the vine.” That blew them away. That was radical for them to hear. It was such an amazing statement that they were not the vine.
Look at John 15:5, please. Sometimes it takes years to learn this, and sometimes we have to be shocked out of it too. Even though we hold the creed, are orthodox, and say we believe the truth, unless God convinces you that you are not the vine, you are going to try to be the vine.
Unless God shocks me and jolts me out of this idea, it is ingrained. We think we are the vine.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
When we look for verses on the deity of Christ, sometimes there are better verses than those that simply say, “Jesus is God.” Think of one of your neighbors—just one of them. You have a name in mind? Go over to that neighbor, knock at the door, and say, “Without me, you can do nothing.”
You know what they will say? “Who do you think you are? What kind of arrogance is that?”
Our Lord Jesus said to the whole world, “Without Me, ye can do nothing.” He is God, or He is a madman to say something like that. What a revelation that is: “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
The reason it is so hard to grasp is because we have proved Him wrong many times. “Without Me, you can do nothing.” Yes, I can. I can do a lot of stuff without God. I can, and so can you.
I am not going to point fingers, but I bet you there are ministries that have been built that have not come from God—churches, missions, seminaries, Bible schools, families, and lives. We do it all the time.
What do you mean, “Without Me, ye can do nothing”? Without Him, we do a lot of stuff, and we get involved in a lot of work. Here is what He meant: without Me, ye can do nothing that can be called fruit.
You can do a lot of stuff, but nothing that is called fruit, nothing that will remain, and nothing that will glorify God. That is what He meant: “Without Me, ye can do nothing.”
As long as we look to some vine that is not Jesus—if we think we are the vine, if we think the church is the vine, if we think some ministry is the vine, or some man or woman is the vine—we are in big trouble.
Jesus said, “I am the true vine,” and by that He meant, “You are not the vine.” I am not the vine for me, and I am not the vine for you. You are not the vine for you, and you are not the vine for me. We are not the vine for us. I do not know where to go with that, but you get the idea.
Our Lord Jesus is the vine. I am not going to get into my testimony, but for years I thought I was the vine. I was trying to do God-stuff.
You get so tired. You faint. You cannot do it. You get so discouraged and so frustrated. You try to live off your own energy, and you try to generate and build up this zeal and get involved. You have been there.
Jesus said that He was the true vine. That is not the main thing He meant, though, when He said, “I am the vine; you are not.” He certainly meant that.
Let me suggest another thing He meant when He said, “I am the true vine.” I think He meant, “I am the vine.” That is, I created the vine to picture something, and I am the reality that I pictured when I created that vine in the original. I am the genuine vine. I am the reality that answers to the vine.
If the vine pictures the promised land, natural joy, supernatural joy, the love of God, the new covenant, security, heaven, and that whole list I gave you, He is saying, “I am the true vine, the reality of all of that.”
I want you to imagine with me. Humor me. Play with me here. I want you to go back in your imagination, because I am going to put words in God’s mouth. I do not want to be irreverent, but I think, on the level of earth, we have to create things to get us looking in the right direction.
I think it went something like this. We are in eternity past. There is nothing—no angels, no earth, no life. There is nothing. God is up there, and I speak as a fool, as if He is trying to figure out what He is going to do.
“I think I will create something, because I want to communicate Me. I am going to create things to picture Me. I am going to make a great museum that they can live in.”
How can I communicate life? I am the Life. I want them to have life with a capital L. I want them to have abundant life. How can I communicate life? I think God said, “I know what I will do. I will create life, because that is a great illustration of life. I will create biology to illustrate life.”
Then I know, when I create life, they will look at life and study life, and maybe they will catch it. I will put life everywhere—in the air, in the sea, on the land. I will make bugs, birds, elephants, fish, plants, mushrooms. I will make life everywhere.
Every time they turn around, they are going to say, “Life, life, life.” Maybe they will catch on. I will make that so that they understand.
He also created inorganic things, which is another picture we will not get into. It is just as thrilling, but we will not touch that. God’s plan was to create an organic world—crawling, budding, teeming with life.
Life in the river, life in the puddle, life in the drop, life in the air—life everywhere. You know I am right. It is there. You see it.
God carefully designed this plan, this something that all organisms have in common. They do not know what to call it. They call it protoplasm, and they break it down and say, “Well, it has carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen in it,” but there is something missing. It is called life, and they do not know what it is. They just recognize it.
Life is different from a stone, because a stone does not have that thing called life. A bug has life. A stone does not have life. There is an unbridgeable gulf between the stone and the plant, the flower, and the insect. Life.
I am not trying to define life. I am just trying to recognize that God made this on purpose. It is a fact.
Then God said, “That is what I will do. I will make all of that life. But I have got to be careful not to make anything that lives independently alive. Not one thing in life can have independent life, because that will ruin My picture.”
God said, “All right, now I have life. Now I think I will create something to sustain that life, something to support that life, something to maintain and develop that life, so that life can survive and grow and develop and multiply. I think I will make the environment.”
All that happened in the eternal counsels. I know that. God said, “I am going to make the environment so that life can live. I have created a zillion forms of life, and now I have got to make an element in which they can live and move and have their being.”
It came to pass, and you know it, that this world consists of organic life. In every living thing is the principle of life, but in no living thing is the condition of life. The conditions of life are in the environment; the principle of life is in the organism.
I have lungs, but I need the atmosphere. I have a stomach—you have noticed that—but I need food. God has made me, and everything else, in such a way that the living thing needs the environment.
Then God said, “In My museum, I am going to have to see to it that the organism can only live as it has union with the environment. If that is broken, the organism will die.” He made it. It was on purpose. God designed it that way.
What is life for an organism, on the level of earth, in the words of science? Life is just an organism living in union with its environment.
What is death? That is when an organism is cut off somehow from its environment. If it is cut off a little bit, it dies a little bit. When it is finally cut off, it is altogether dead.
The deaf are dead to the whole world of sound. They are cut off from that part of the environment. The blind are dead to the whole world of sight.
Sometimes the environment changes. Sometimes we change. We have to adjust, and you can read all that in your science book. I can run from a storm. I can run, perhaps, from cold weather. But sometimes something happens in here, and I cannot run anymore. I am cut off from the environment, and I die.
God made it that way on purpose, because He wanted to say, “I am the true vine. I am the environment. I am the element of the branch.”
I created all that to show that I am the environment. “In Him,” He says, “they will live, and have their being.” Christ is the Christian’s environment.
God did not need to do it that way. He did not need to create a universe to make Him happy. He was a happy God before you came along, and a happy God before I came along. He had joy, fullness, completeness, and purpose. It was all inside of God.
He did not need to create an angel or an archangel. He does not need you. He does not need me. All the Christians in the world gathered together, from every age and generation, would not be enough to make one praise to worship Him as He ought to be worshipped.
Every living thing He has ever made, all put together, could not be an offering for Him. He is Almighty God. He is El Shaddai. He is the Lord. He is sufficient.
But He wanted us to see it. He did not have to stoop to picture Himself as a mother hen, an eagle, a rock, or a vine. He did that to accommodate and gratify our weakness, so that we could understand—to make Himself visible.
What is suggested in John 15 under the figure of the vine and the branches is fully developed in the epistles of the New Testament. Let me do just a little more donkey work with you. Try to stay with me on this.
For four thousand years, through forty-four books of the Bible, we never had this great revelation. It was not until Pentecost, not until the Holy Spirit came, that He unveiled this truth that you cannot even open the epistles without seeing: in Christ Jesus.
Why is that so prominent in the New Testament? In Christ—that is your environment. In Christ—that is your element. Christ is your native air. Christ is your native food. Christ is your native drink. Christ is your native rest. Christ is now your element.
You live in Him. You move in Him. You breathe in Him. It is all in Christ Jesus, in the Lord, in Christ Jesus.
We are not just externally connected, like two parallel lives. He has His life; I have my life; we are together. No. It is not just that we receive His truth or preach His gospel. It is not just that we are saved from hell and destined for heaven. That is true.
But something wonderful, something new, God has done. He has come inside, and now He wants to live out His life. This is a glorious thing.
Open the New Testament and begin to read. We are partakers of everything He has ever done. He died; we died in Him. He was buried; we were buried in Him. He rose; we rose in Him. He ascended; we ascended in Him. He is seated; we are seated in Him. He is coming; we are coming in Him.
We are identified with Christ. He has become our environment. He is the ground on which we stand. He is the air that we breathe. He is our element. He is the true vine.
Churches mentioned in the Bible are in Christ Jesus. They are found in Christ, preserved in Christ, saved in Christ, sanctified in Christ, rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus, and made perfect in Christ Jesus.
Our ways are said to be ways in Christ Jesus. Our conversation is in Christ Jesus. Our faith, our hope, and our love are in Christ Jesus. We are told to think in the Lord, walk in the Lord, labor in the Lord, suffer in the Lord, and triumph in the Lord.
Everything is in the Lord. I am to receive you in the Lord. You are to receive me in the Lord. I am to forgive you in the Lord. You are to forgive me in the Lord. Wives, submit to your husbands in the Lord. Children, obey your parents in the Lord.
What is all this “in the Lord,” “in Christ Jesus”? We put on Christ. He is our environment. The truth we hold is the truth as it is in Jesus. God’s will has become God’s will in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Everything is in Christ. Why? He is our environment. When we die, we die in the Lord. We sleep in Jesus. Those who are dead in Christ—when He appears, we will appear with Him in glory, in Christ Jesus.
He has literally become our environment, our life, our element in which we live and move and have our being.
The gospel does not just give us new information about a covenant. The gospel informs us about our state in Christ Jesus. It remains for us to draw from Christ—our life, our environment, our element—to abide in Him.
Then we will begin to learn our capacities, our possessions, our responsibilities, our duties, and our destinies—how we relate to God, how we relate to heaven, and how we relate to earth.
Oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, the fullness and wonder of that truth: “I am the true vine.” All that is included in that. Everything is in Christ Jesus.
I wonder if you have ever seen that idea—that Christ is your environment.
My son Daniel, thanks to Rick Baker, has taken up a sport called diving. You should see him in his gear. Talk about a strange-looking guy. His feet look funny. He wears a rubber suit. He has a strange tank on his back, strange gloves on his hands, and some strange thing over his face.
He walks real slow and funny. He has a big belt with big lead things on it. Where are you going, you strange creature?
I will tell you where he is going. He is going to an environment where he does not belong. That is not his element. He is going down there with the fish and the lobsters.
You know what he has to do? He has to take his environment with him. So he looks a little strange. He goes down with his environment into this strange environment.
You know what a Christian is? He is somebody who lives where he does not belong anymore. It is not his element anymore.
You do not read in the Bible where Paul says, “I am in prison.” You never read that. You know what you read? “I am in Christ, in prison.”
You are not in prison. That is why he could be so happy there. You know why? Because he carried his environment with him.
That man was always absent from the body and present with the Lord. Every time you look, he was not in trouble; he was in Christ in trouble. He was not in the sea; he was in Christ in the sea. He took his environment with him.
So can you, and so can I. The wonder of living in this new environment called Jesus Christ.
“I am the true vine.” What did He mean by that? I will tell you what He meant. He meant, “I am the vine, not you.” But He also meant, “I am the vine. I am your environment. I am your element. I am your life, and everything you do is going to be from that.”
I read a little further down, and it sort of shocked me. It said, “If you abide in Me, and I abide in you.” I expected it to say, “You shall bear fruit.” It did not say that. It said, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you.” What is that all about? Prayer.
God made organic life, and He made the environment. He made organic life to receive. That is all it does. It receives the environment. It takes the environment. The environment is the great giver, and organic life is the great receiver. It just takes.
It never even asks. God said that is because organic life is going to pass away, and the environment is going to pass away, because that is just a picture. The reality is, “I want you to have life, and I am your environment,” and that is not going to pass away.
What is faith? It is the Christian reaching out for his environment. That is all faith is.
It is so beautiful that now we can talk to our environment. If you abide in Him, you can talk to Him and say, “These are my needs,” and He provides. This is marvelous. We need to understand what it means to live from that.
Tonight, may God help us to see: “I am the true vine. You are not the vine. I am the true vine. Everything I created the vine to picture is found in abundant fullness in Me. I am your life. I am your element. I am your environment.”
You can carry Me, and they will look at you and say, “What a strange-looking fellow. He walks so strange. Peculiar people.” And you will live. You will live because you are connected to another environment. Your conversation, your life, is in heaven.
I pray that God will teach us how to live in our environment, how to move in our environment, and how to exist in our environment. We are not doing it. The church is on life support. They have not learned to live from their environment.
They are sick, fainting, and dying all over the place because they have not learned: “I am the true vine, and you are the branches.” I made it that way on purpose. I put it there as a picture, and we miss it every time we turn.
God, gracious God, give us eyes to see it and begin to learn what it means to have Jesus Christ as your element, your environment—the true vine.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank You not for what we think we know this means, but for everything You have inspired it to mean. Burn in our hearts indelibly the truth that You are the true vine.
Thank You that You are going to do this in a way that far exceeds anything we could ask or think. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.