I’m going to be in trouble, but just so that I’ll know: are there any here tonight who were not here last night?
Okay, a couple. Then I’ll try, in the review, to give enough of a capsule so you know what I’m talking about.
As we come to the study of God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable. That principle is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
The One who inspired this Book is the only One who can unveil Christ in this Book and feed Him to our spirits. All of the scholarship in the world is not going to get you to the heart of God—only the Holy Spirit.
That is not saying, “Don’t study.” I pray that you’ll study. The greater the scholarship, the clearer the principle; the clearer the principle, the more precious the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But if you study only the human side, the Bible says you will become proud, because knowledge puffs up. We need the Lord to show Himself.
There is a verse in Jeremiah 31:25. Let me quote it, and then we’ll go to prayer:
“For I have satiated the weary soul, and every sorrowful soul have I replenished.”
Anybody like that here tonight? Let’s bow.
Our Heavenly Father, once again we come knowing it is not possible for us to work up some attitude of childlikeness and helpless dependence. But we come, Lord, trusting You for the miracle of obedience.
We come confessing that we need Your life, Your illumination. Give us the light of the knowledge of God in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ. Show us Him, that we might be changed from one degree of glory to another.
We thank You in advance that You are going to meet with us tonight. We know it is on Your heart to communicate Yourself. We ask, Lord, that no human instrument would be in the way.
Pray that You use our meditations and our thoughts. And I pray that You would save us all from futility. We ask, we claim it, in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Turn, please, in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 15—a very familiar passage. We are meditating on that wonderful passage and asking the Lord to grace us by revealing Himself and the burdens that are on His heart.
We are meeting three times: we met last night, tonight, and, Lord willing, tomorrow morning. Basically, what we have done with this passage—and I’ll say it right up front—is this: I do not intend, and I do not expect, to give you anything new.
You have been in this passage. You bask in it. You have seen the Lord in this passage. But I find great privilege in proclaiming again the great verities that are in this passage—just announcing them to you, I pray, in a fresh way.
Last night we looked together at the truth, “I am the true vine.” What did Jesus mean when He called Himself the true vine?
Tonight, I would like us to focus on the truth that, by abiding in the true Vine, we are enabled to bear fruit unto God. That is what we are going to look at tonight.
Then, Lord willing, tomorrow we want to take the first and the last part of this passage: “My Father is the husbandman.” What is that great revelation of God? What does it mean to prune the fruitful branches? What is it that comes from God, that is fruit from God, that He shuts down, that He cuts off? We need to see that.
I am going to ask what we did last night, if you do not mind doing that again. I think it is important to get the text before our hearts. It is only sixteen verses, so if several of you feel inclined, stand up and read loudly so everyone can hear. Read a few verses, and then someone else read John 15:1–16.
“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.”—John 15:1–16
Last evening, I set before your hearts this amazing statement of our Lord Jesus: “I am the true vine.” Just for the sake of review, I suggested at least two things that I think God must have intended when He said that.
First of all, when He said, “I am the true vine,” He meant, “I am the vine; you are not the vine.” I am the true Vine—not you. Do not try to be the vine, because then you will not be able to produce. In the sense that I am the source of life, you are not the source of life.
Israel had that mindset. God had instructed them that they were the vine, and they did not understand what He meant by that. So when Jesus said this, it was quite a jolt to their thinking: “I am the true vine.”
It is a very subtle thing, I think, that the enemy tries to do to our thinking. We read a verse like John 15:5, “Apart from Me ye can do nothing,” and we think, “Well, that means before we are saved. Before we trust the Lord, it is not possible to do anything.”
But if you read the context, He is not talking about before you come to know the Lord. He is talking about those who are abiding in the Vine, united to the Vine. For those who are in Christ, “Apart from Me ye can do nothing”—even for Christians.
I remember when I was wrestling through some of these great truths of God and how puzzled I was. In my legalistic days, I worked my head off in order to earn favor with God. I thought if I worked hard enough and was involved enough, I would earn blessing. I would work for it.
Then I thought that God finally turned the light on, and I had this idea: I cannot earn anything by doing something for God. I have got to do it because I love Him. I have got to do it out of gratitude for all that He has done for me.
Do you realize, brothers and sisters in Christ, that I do not have any more ability to perform out of love and gratitude than I had when I tried to earn my way and tried to do something to appease God?
Now, let us say there were a weight—some of you are pretty husky, so I have got to make it big—one thousand pounds, two thousand pounds. And God said, “If you do not lift two thousand pounds, you cannot go to heaven.” How many of you would try to lift it? How many of you would succeed?
What if God said, “All right, you know too much. You cannot lift that to go to heaven. Lift it just because you love Me. Lift it because I have done so much for you, and your heart is so full of gratitude. Just do it out of gratitude. Do it out of love.” Could you do it?
It still weighs one thousand or two thousand pounds. We are no more able to perform out of love and gratitude than we are able to perform in order to minister and earn some kind of favor with God.
Nobody bears fruit in any other way than by abiding in the Vine. That is what we are going to look at tonight.
The second thing is that Christ is the true Vine in the sense that He created the vine to picture something, and He is the reality of all that was pictured by the vine.
I will not go through all that again, but take a concordance. Trace vine, branch, grape, cluster, and wine through the Scriptures, and see all that in pictures. Christ is the fullness of that.
We suggested that God created organic life—all of life and all environment—and life draws from environment. God made that to be a picture everywhere you look: “I am the true Vine. I am your element. I am your environment. I am your very existence.”
That brings us, then, to our second topic. May God grace us: abiding in Christ in order to bring forth fruit.
It is not possible to read the chapter we just read, or that portion of it, and not see the emphasis on fruit and on abiding.
Notice, please: in verse 2 there is fruit, more fruit. Verse 5: much fruit. Verse 16: “that your fruit should remain.” It is God’s will that every Christian here bear fruit, more fruit, remaining fruit, to the glory of God.
The grapevine was God’s perfect selection for fruit. The single grape is a fruit, but the grape is in a cluster of grapes, and that is the fruit. Every branch has several clusters of grapes, and every vine has branches. That is God’s most prolific picture of fruit: the vine, the grape, the cluster, the branches, and the fullness of the whole vine.
It is God’s will that we be productive.
Glance at verse 4: “Abide in Me, and I in you.” Verse 5: “He who abides in Me.” Verse 6: “If anyone does not abide in Me.” Verse 7: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you.”
This chapter talks about fruit. This chapter talks about abiding. The great teaching, the great principle of this chapter, is this: the essential condition for all fruit-bearing is abiding in Jesus Christ.
Since that is true, tonight, Lord willing, we will touch on what it means to abide and what it means that abiding leads to fruit that is more, much, and remaining.
Let me tell you right up front two things we are not going to look at tonight, because if I were in your place, I would expect to hear these two things.
We are not going to look at the definition of fruit tonight. You need it, I need it, and we need to see it. We are going to see it tomorrow. Tonight, what we are going to look at is this: abide in Christ to bring forth fruit, whatever that is.
You do not need to know what it is tonight. I want you to know that whatever it is—and I think we all might have different ideas about what it is—you cannot get it unless you abide in Christ.
The second thing may sound disappointing, but it is not really, because it will be suggested. I am not going to tell you tonight how to abide in Christ. I am going to give the fact of it. I am going to describe it. When I am done, you will know how.
But I am not going to tell you how, because that also is part of it. Until you see pruning, you will not really understand the simplicity of how to abide. So we are going to see fruit, whatever it is, and we are going to see abiding, but not tell you how. We will look at the facts of abiding, and I think it will all come together, Lord willing, as we go through it.
What is included in the great truth of abiding in Jesus Christ? For the sake of those who like logical connection: what does it mean that Christ is the Vine? At least these two things. What does it mean to abide in Christ? I would like to set before your heart at least these two things.
It is not possible to abide if you leave one of these out. There might be more than this, but at least these two things.
Look again, if you would, at verses 4 and 5:
“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.”
That expression at the end—“Apart from Me ye can do nothing”—implies our principle: to abide implies a distrust of self.
Those who have learned to abide have accepted God’s revelation that there is nothing in them that can add to this process of fruit-bearing. It is acknowledging that I am nothing. There can be no growth, no production, no fruit, if I am the source of that.
Now you say, “That is self-evident.” I do not know how many Christians you know for whom it is not so self-evident. We can hear it a thousand times: “Boy, I believe that,” and then go out and try to be the cause of our own effect. We go out and try to do it on our own.
Satan is clever. In case you did not know it, he does not like you. He hates you with a passion. He hates Jesus, and so he goes after His children, because that is the way he can hurt the Lord.
If all it said was, “If you abide in Me, you bear fruit,” Satan could not deceive you with that. That is too clear. That is too simple.
So what he does is take your focus off this truth: no fruit without Jesus. Christians would be doing great; they would be having victory all the time. Instead, he puts in an intermediate step called growth.
You ever hear that? Growth. “You have got to grow. If you are going to bear fruit, you have got to learn to grow in the Lord. Are you involved in all those things that lead to growth?”
He gets us off target by putting our eyes on growth. “Just abide in Jesus and you bear fruit, but to grow, you better study. You better pray. You better get involved in this program. You better deny yourself. You better get stewardship. You better get your priorities in order. You better understand the principles of discipleship. You better, better, better do this and that”—the whole thing.
I have six children, as you know—six wonderful children. We gave many laws and rules through the years, like Galatians, to keep them in protective custody until grace came. They had many rules, but of all the rules we ever gave our children, Lillian and I never told them to grow.
We never did. No, we did sarcastically: “Grow up,” you know, like that. But I am not talking about that. I am talking about growing.
There is no command to grow, and there is no counsel that you can give anyone on how to grow.
If it is true that there is no fruit without abiding in Jesus, then, saints, there is no growth without abiding in Jesus. The growth that leads to fruit comes the same way the fruit comes.
You can say this: except I abide in You and You abide in me, I will not grow—I cannot grow. Except you abide in Me, you cannot come to the end of growth, which is fruit.
That is why, when Jesus was trying to teach His fretting disciples about growth, He said in Matthew 6:28:
“And why are ye anxious concerning raiment?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin.”
He did not say, “Consider the lilies that grow.” He did not say, “Consider the lilies that are beautiful.” He said, “Take a look at the lily—how it grows.” And in case you did not get it, He says, “Without toil, without spinning.”
Do not answer: how are you growing? Some of us are spinning. How are you growing? Have you learned what it means to abide in Christ?
If I am going to bring forth fruit, then I have got to abide in Christ in such a way that I grow without toil and without spinning, like the lily grows. Have you looked into God’s lily manual on how to grow?
He tells us how to grow by studying the lily. Any growth in your life or my life that can in any way be traced back to toil or spinning is unreal. It will be cut off. It will wither, it will die, be bound in bundles, and burn up.
Very few Christians, I fear, have learned to grow as the lily grows. It is such a precious picture. That is, very few churches have learned to grow as the lily grows.
Let me describe for you, because the enemy is subtle, the growth that is not growth—the growth that passes for growth but is not growth.
There is an enlargement, an increase, an expansion that we call growth, and it is not really growth. Things can get bigger without growing.
You say, “Give me an example.” I will give you an example: an icicle. That grows as the thing freezes and unfreezes and gets long. We used to pop them off the house and sword-fight with them, and they get pretty big.
That is called accretion: when one thing is piled on top of another thing and another thing—gradual external addition. Dead things come together and cling, and they begin to grow and grow.
In Newport, as you know—or at least on the island there—we have growing sand dunes. They do not grow like the lily grows. The sand blows up, and they get bigger and bigger. “Whoa, how that has grown.” Yes, it grew all right—by accretion.
You ever see a crystal? Lillian and I, some time ago, went to Washington, D.C., and went through the museum there. What a place that is. She is into archaeology and Egypt and all that kind of stuff—relics. That part does not turn me on, but I went in to see the rocks.
I went in to see the crystals, and some of those are pretty beautiful. They grow. I mean, as death piles on death, they get bigger and bigger and beautiful. Some of those crystals are polished and look so beautiful. It is death.
Coral is the same way—so many different colors. Do you know what coral is? It is nothing more than the skeletons of these little sea creatures. They have lived and they have died, and they have crystallized. They have grown into this beautiful coral and these great reefs.
I was a coral Christian. I know coral Christians. I know coral assemblies. What a terrible thing is this thing called growth, when it gets bigger and bigger but is not growth. It is not like the lily grows.
We are not to grow like the icicle grows, or the sand dune grows, or the crystal grows, or the coral grows, or the reef grows.
I fear coral crystals because they look so good. You can polish that crystal and wear it on a chain, and make that thing beautiful. There are a lot of people who have death piled on death, and they call it growth.
Adding pews, adding buildings, adding stations, adding resources, adding meetings, adding programs—piling this on and piling that on—and we are getting big. Then they say, “Whoa, what a place. They are growing.”
Are they growing, or is it accretion? Except you abide in the Vine, you cannot grow and you cannot bear fruit.
All of this expansion that is not growth dishonors the Lord. It might look good, but it is not growth. If you do not cut it off, He will. He has to.
What does it mean to abide in the Lord, to grow as the lily grows? First of all, it implies this distrust of self. It acknowledges that apart from Jesus Christ, I am nothing, I have nothing, I can do nothing, and I can contribute nothing.
The reality is, my help hinders God. Your help—every time you help God, you hinder. Every time I have helped God, I have injured.
Oh, if we could only see the wonder, the simplicity, of what He is trying to say here. Scholars tell us that the Greek word for abide is the word menō. It means to stay. It means to remain.
Except you abide, except you stay, except you remain. We make everything so hard, and everything is really so simple.
You say, “Oh, I have got to learn to abide. Abiding is so tough. It is for spiritual hotshots.” The reality is, when you trusted Jesus, you did not trust yourself. You were abiding in the Lord.
What does the word mean? Stay there. That is what it means. Stay.
Right now, you are all abiding in this room—every one of you. Is it not easy? Now think about it: you can abide here for another forty minutes.
You know when the problem comes? When you stop abiding. That is work. When it is time to leave, now you have got to exercise, you have got to get up, you have got to get everything. It takes work to stop abiding.
Everybody talks about learning how to abide. The problem is, you learned how not to abide. It was easy to abide because God placed you in Christ Jesus, and He was your environment. He was your sufficiency. He was everything. Stay there.
As you received Christ, so walk in Him. It never gets tougher than it was the first moment you trusted Jesus. You trusted Him, and He was everything. Then you stopped abiding. That is the problem: we stop abiding.
It is not hard to abide in Christ. It is to stay where God has put you. He has placed you in Christ Jesus.
Some people get this idea that now we are into the deep—the deeper spiritual walk and all that kind of thing. It is not deep. It is not hard. It is not difficult. Truth is simple because truth is a Person, and His name is Jesus. That is what makes it so simple.
Somebody has the idea that abiding in the Lord for fruit is for spiritual hotshots, some esoteric group of special Christian people who know Hebrew and Greek. It is for every branch.
It is for every branch, for every Christian. It is my great joy to announce to you: you do not have to have a theological degree to abide in Jesus, to grow, and to bear fruit.
You do not have to know some language to abide in Christ. You do not have to have a thousand years’ experience in the deep things of God to abide in Jesus Christ. You need to go back to where you were when you started.
You came, little Lord. You were helpless. You saw that you had nothing to offer God. You saw that Jesus was everything to you. In that moment, you were abiding.
Somewhere along the line, you stopped abiding. Abiding is just coming back to that place where you recognize, “Without Him, I can do nothing.” God has placed you in Christ.
But there is a second ingredient. Not only does abiding mean a distrust of self, but here is the second part—and this is really the life of it.
Abiding in Christ is not only not trusting me; it is trusting Him and drawing from Him that life that is going to produce the fruit. It is being a partaker of the divine nature. It is being a partaker of the Vine.
In Andrew Murray’s wonderful book on abiding in Christ, he makes this comment:
“The branch is such only by the Creator’s work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fullness, the fatness, the fruitfulness of the vine, is communicated to every branch.”
Oh, that is exactly it. In God’s picture, when He created organic life, it was just called life. He created life to picture life, and it is still called life. When you come to the Lord, He gives you life, but now life has a name.
It is not just some thing called life, some white substance, protoplasm. That is just a picture. That is just the illustration. The Vine gives life. The name of that life is the Holy Spirit.
That is the life that comes from Him, through which we grow and through which we bear fruit. It is the Holy Spirit of God.
Whether you are talking about one grape, a cluster of grapes, or the mashing of all the grapes together in community like the church, whatever you are talking about, the Holy Spirit is the common life.
One vine has only one life. We have a vineyard down the street from where we live. The vineyard owner is not a Christian, and so I had to go to the vineyard. You cannot study this and not go to the vineyard.
I knocked at the keeper’s door, and I said to him, because I thought this would be the best way to open it, “I am a Christian, and I am studying in my Bible about the vine and the branches. You are a vinekeeper. Can you help me? I want to know what God means.”
He was happy to help me. He thought I was a little strange in my slippers. I said, “The verse that is getting me is this: He said, ‘I am the vine; you are the branches.’”
He looked at me and said, “A vine does not have branches.”
I said, “Wait a minute. A vine does not have branches?”
He said, “No, I buy branches, but it does not have branches.”
That is good. That is how one the Vine and the branches are: one life going through that whole thing—one divine life, one miracle life, one growing life. It is all the Holy Spirit of God.
It is important, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we understand the difference between the source of life and expressions of life. There are many expressions of life.
In God’s picture, He gave, in Colossians, the human body, and He gave the head. The Head is Christ. In Colossians 2:19, He said:
“Holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.”
I have no life center in my hand. My hand can be amputated, and I live, because there is no life center here. That is an expression of life.
Every member in my body has one life, not two. That is the church. We have one life. It is the life of God. It is the life of the Holy Spirit—every member sharing the same life.
Some branches are big branches, some branches are little branches, and some branches are stubby branches. There is not a Christian in here who has more of Jesus than another Christian. We all have the same life, and that life is Christ.
Now, my branch might be stubby, and your branch might turn one way, and another branch might turn another way. Harry Alexander’s branch might twist another way. Our branches twist all kinds of ways, but there is one life—one life, the Holy Spirit of God.
Just as Christ is the Head of the church, He is the source of life.
Christian fellowship is a wonderful expression of life, but it is not the source of life. Christ is the source of life. Someone says, “What you need in order to grow is a good Christian fellowship.” That is a good expression of life, but it is not the source of life.
We talk about family altar, quiet time, and morning manna. I used to be big on that—real big. I would get up at three-thirty or four o’clock. You know why? Because that was my source of life.
I thought, “Man, if I did not have my devotions, my day would go wrong because I did not have that devotion.” That is a wonderful expression of life, but it is a lousy god. It is not God. It is not Christ.
Christ is the only source of life. Quiet time is a wonderful thing, and I am not going to knock it. I love getting into the Word. But it is not the source of life. If you are dependent on your quiet time to stay afloat, you had better ask God to dawn this on you: you have got to learn to abide in Christ.
You can mention all those other things. Christian service is a wonderful expression of life, but it is not life. Jesus is life. Confession of sin is an expression of life; it is not life.
The ordinances that we share are precious expressions of life, but they are not life. Spiritual gifts are wonderful expressions of life, but they are not the source of life. Only Jesus is the source of life.
If you are having to depend on a Bible conference, a Bible retreat, special meetings, or something like that, you have not learned to abide in the Vine.
The Christ who is in me is the Christ who is in you, the Christ who is in us. Every branch in Me that abides in Me will grow and bear fruit.
Glance, if you would, back to John 6. There is a precious little verse here on abiding, before our Lord Jesus got to this day before the cross.
John 6:53:
“Jesus therefore said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves.
He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”
To eat His flesh and drink His blood means to drink Jesus. It means to draw from Him, to devour the Lord Jesus Himself. That is what it means.
When you abide, you do not trust yourself. You just trust Him, and you draw from Him.
God made all creation to illustrate that. God made the plant, the lily, the tree, the vine, in such a way that its communion with the environment was the only issue.
Take the lily. Jesus said, “Consider the lilies, how they grow.” That is how to grow. You want to learn? Study the lily. They do not toil; they do not spin.
How does the lily grow? I will tell you one thing: it never concerns itself with growth. That is not an issue with the lily. It is not an issue with the tree. They do not worry about growing.
They just sort of drink in the sunshine. They put out their little leaves, and photosynthesis takes place because God made it that way. They send out their little roots into the soil.
You know why? Because the Bible says, “Rooted and grounded in Him.” He is your soil, He is your sunshine, He is your dew, He is your rain, and He is your food.
What does the plant do? It just drinks and drinks and takes and receives. It takes in that nourishment, and it does not think about growing.
A plant never thinks, “I wonder how many leaves I am going to have. I wonder how many plants I am going to have, or how big they are going to be.” A plant never thinks about growing, and a plant never thinks about fruit.
God made organic life. He was so creative. He made those little leaves with their little receivers to take in the light. He made snouts, trunks, claws, and proboscises so that creatures could draw in their environment.
What does organic life do in relation to the environment? It just drinks and takes it in.
You want to learn how to abide in Christ? Do not trust yourself. Feed on Jesus. Feed on Christ. That is what it means to abide in Him.
Do you know what is going to happen when you stop trusting yourself and start feeding on Jesus? You are going to grow like the lily grows—without fretting, without anxiety, without worry.
You say, “Well, I have got to go hunt out my environment.” No, no. Watch the lily. The environment comes to you. The environment comes to the lily.
Oh, God, give us lily life. God, teach us to grow like the lily grows: to just drink in and draw from the Lord. He has created this whole universe to teach us.
The glory of a grapevine is a grape. The glory of an apple tree is an apple. The glory of a peach tree is a peach. The glory of a fig tree is a fig.
The glory of a Christian is his fruit.
What is his hope for glory? You know the verse, Colossians 1:27: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” The hope of fruit.
What is my hope to grow? You say, “I have got to study growth.” No, you do not have to study growth. Run far away from studying growth. Do not advise people how to grow. Teach them how to abide.
Because if they have no trust in themselves, no confidence in the flesh, and they just begin to absorb and drink in the life of the Vine, they are going to grow, and they are going to produce fruit.
If God dawns that on you, do you realize how much rest is in that? I do not have to worry about growing. That has been a big part of my life: “How am I going to grow? How am I going to bear fruit?”
If I do not have to worry about that, and I do not have to worry about fruit, then you say, “All I have to do is drink Jesus.” That is all you have to do from this moment until the time you step into heaven. Then you will start drinking Jesus when you see Him as He is.
It brings rest. It brings confidence.
Let me wrap it all up by giving you the three New Testament examples of bearing fruit.
The first is right here in John 15: the Vine and the branches. That is how to bear fruit.
The second one we have already mentioned, and it is in Colossians 2:19: the Head and the body.
The third one is in Romans 7. Listen as I read Romans 7:4:
“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God.”
That is not my example. That is God’s example. It is the Holy Spirit’s example.
God has begun to dawn on my heart a little bit. There is ground to be possessed. I am not claiming I have arrived anywhere, but I have begun to see a little bit of this side of the wonder of just letting the life of the Lord flow through you.
When I see gloomy Christians, I just want to shake them sometimes. They say, “Oh, it is such a hard life. I am just a pilgrim here, going through this barren wilderness, having such a hard time. But God is faithful, and He is getting me through.”
Hearing that kind of testimony, I say, “Where is grace? You do not understand. You have not seen it. You are supposed to have Christ as your environment.”
They say it is so hard to bear fruit. A secret, folks: that sweet word is “she.” No, there—Lillian and I, this is confidential, but I am going to spread it around.
We are fruit-bearers. I mean, we had six kids, and every one of them came out of a very intimate, precious, sacred, wonderful union.
Tell me it is hard to bear fruit. We have too many young people here to say too much, but I want you to get the idea. It is not my idea; it is God’s idea.
God has said it ought to be enjoyable to bear fruit unto God.
It is like the head. When my hand lives in union with the head, and this hand lives in union with the head, the head gives life. It is wonderful.
It is when this hand thinks it has a life of its own, when it is independent and lives outside of that union, that there is trouble. When the body has one life, common life—God’s life—how everything fits together, and they grow together, and they produce together. It is marvelous.
Yesterday evening, I shared with you about my son Daniel, the diver. I want to develop that just a little bit more for those who were not here. The illustration is that Christ is our environment.
Daniel has taken up diving. He dresses up in his fins, rubber suit, weight belt, and mask, and he looks so strange because he is going to an environment where he does not belong.
To live in that environment, he has to take his environment with him. Though he is below, he lives from an environment above.
He came home from his first dive. Lillian and I were excited for him. He does not get involved in too much; he is quiet and stays on the side. But he was excited about this.
We said, “How did you like it?”
He said, “I hated it.”
“Why did you hate it? You spent so much money. You are supposed to like it. I put out two thousand dollars for you to hate it? This is not right. Why did you hate it?”
“Too much pressure. So much pressure down there.”
He said there was a button on the mask that lets water out, and he forgot to push it. He kept looking at his gauge because he thought he was going to run out of air. He got so afraid that he started to hyperventilate.
They had to cut the whole class short because he was hyperventilating. They had to all come up, and he said, “I do not think I am going to do it anymore.”
You know why? Because he did not know how to use his apparatus. Though he was connected, he was not connected in experience, and he did not understand his environment.
You ought to talk to him now. He loves it. He loves it because he learned—guess what he learned? He learned how to breathe.
I am serious. That is all. He learned how to breathe. Now he is having fun. He went down and looked at the wreck—there is a sunken ship down there—and he came back telling us all about it. We cannot shut him up now. He loves it.
That is the Christian life. If you learn to breathe, if you learn to drink, if you learn to take in—if you stop doing accretion and piling death upon death, thinking that you are growing—if you stay out of it and just enjoy Jesus, then you are going to grow.
Then you are going to bear fruit, whatever it is. You are going to bear fruit unto God. That fruit is going to remain, and God is going to be glorified.
May God raise up a tribe, even from this place. May God raise up a people who put no confidence in the flesh and just draw from Jesus Christ.
They will grow like the lily grows: without toil, without spinning. Even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.
Oh, may God help us. The Christian life is a ball. It is fun. I know there are those out there telling me it is not—that it is a war, and it is terrible. It is not. It is a blast. Get in on it. I am serious. Get in on it.
Start abiding in the Vine, and you are going to live with a capital L-I-F-E.
Jesus said:
“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
—John 10:10
May we learn to abide. Let us bow.
Our Father, we thank You for Your Word, Your precious Word. We pray that it would not just be precepts, but that You would indeed teach us how to grow with a growth that is from God.
Teach us how to hold fast to the Head; how to drink from our Lord Jesus; how to draw life; how to be filled with the Spirit of God.
Thank You for common life. Thank You that we all have the same life. Thank You that You placed us in Christ and have only commanded us to stay there.
Teach us to abide, that we might grow and bear fruit for You. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.