The Disciple Jesus
Loved Tells All!
John 15
In July of 1978, Carol spent the summer in Brazil with some missionaries. I was at home, working two full time jobs to pay my way through college. We had been dating for about 8 months, so I decided to send her some roses for her birthday. She has never stopped talking about the beauty and color of those roses. The were kind of a pink/salmon color, and we have never been able to find any like them since.
Two weeks ago, for our 25th anniversary I decided to try again, so I went looking for and found 25 roses that I thought might be close (Oh, and by the way, guys, August is a much better time of year to buy roses than February!) - here, let me show you – [get wilted, dying roses from behind screen] – WHAT??? Yeah, I know, there not exactly the same color, and some of them are more white than pink, but I tried! Aren’t they beautiful? What? There wilted?! Well, yeah, but they are still roses! They are still roses – they still smell good, the petals are still nice and velvety smooth – well, this one is a little rotted, but it’s still smooth!
The flowers looked so good in the store! They were kept in a nice, safe, cool environment. They received nutrients through additives to their water. But the truth is, these flowers are dead. They were dying the day I bought them. I did all I could to keep them alive – They gave me these little packets of Rose Food – and I mixed it according to the directions. I kept them in water. We made sure they were in a nice, sunlit area and got plenty of fresh air from a nearby open window – but they are dead. If I had delivered these flowers in this condition last Wednesday to my wife for our anniversary, she would have been more than a little disappointed in me and questioned my sincerity – don’t you think?
The point is this, no matter how lovely, or how expensive the flower, once it is removed from the plant, it is dying. We may try all sorts of efforts to keep them looking good for as long as possible, but they are dying. There is simply no substitute for a flower that is attached to the plant. Even when the flower’s blossom wilts after it’s season, the branch is still healthy, and growing, ready to produce another flower in it’s next season.
That is the lesson that Jesus taught His disciples on the night before He went to the cross.
We have been studying the memoirs of the disciple Jesus loved – John. John spent three years with Jesus – in fact, he was the only disciple who was with Jesus at every major event in His years of public ministry, and when he sat down to write his memoirs, he spent nearly half of his efforts in the last week of Jesus life, and chapters 13 through 19 are focused on the last 24 hours of His life.
Obviously John found the events and words of that last night extremely important. We shouldn’t find that too surprising, I suppose. If any one of us knew that we were in the last few hours of our life with our family or best friends, we would want those hours to be very special, and we would choose our words carefully. We wouldn’t waste time sharing recipes and playing Scrabble, we would want to talk deeply, share important lessons, leave words of lasting meaning echoing in the ears of our closest friends. And so it was with Jesus. That is why this evening has been so filled with amazing moments:
And now, after the completion of the meal, Mark tells us that they sang a traditional Jewish Passover hymn, and left the upper room, down the cobbled streets of Jerusalem, out through the gates of the city, down the Kidron Valley and up the mount of Olives. This is a familiar and favorite place of Jesus and the disciples. In his description of this event, Luke says they went “as usual to the Mount of Olives”. With no home of His own, it is probable that they often spent the night in this grove, talking into the night, sleeping under the twisted and gnarled trees, watching alternately the torch lit city and the star lit sky.
As they walked into the garden, Jesus stopped by a grape vine, and shared these words with them from John chapter 15:
1 "I am the true vine, and My
Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does
not bear fruit He takes away; F85 and every branch that bears fruit
He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already
clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide
in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it
abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. 5 I
am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears
much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone
does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they
gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If
you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will F86 ask what you desire, and it shall
be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you
bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
9 "As the Father loved Me, I
also have loved you; abide in My love. 10 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. 11 These things I have
spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. 12 This
is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater
love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. 14 You
are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15 No
longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is
doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My
Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me,
but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that
your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may
give you. 17 These things I command you, that you love one
another.
I was sharing with Larry Lensmith this week that Jesus has a way of giving such great truth in such a powerful teaching, in less than two minutes, and it takes a professional pastor to mess it up and stretch it out to a 30 minute sermon!
But I am going to resist that today – I can’t add a single word of deeper meaning to the words that Jesus has spoken here – the truth is obvious: If we do not abide in Jesus, we are like a rose that has been cut from the bush – we are dying.
We may try to use all sorts of efforts to keep things looking good on the outside, but we are dying. Sure, for a short while things may look rosy – great color, beautiful aroma, we may even be able to stand up straight and tall, but before long, the color fades, the aroma becomes one of decay, and the strength begins to fail, and we droop.
No amount of artificial food, no safe environment is going to keep me from spiritual decline, decay and wilt if I am not connected to the vine of Jesus.
So the lesson is clear, and powerful, but how do we stay
connected to Jesus? There is only one
way, and it is found in the word Jesus uses here – “abide.” Do you know what that word means? It means, “Don’t leave!” throughout the Bible that same word is used
105 times to describe one concept – “don’t leave.” It is translated “abide, remain, dwell, continue, tarry, endure, and stay.”
Again,
nothing hard to grasp there. The key to
being connected to Jesus is to never become disconnected from Jesus. Look at verse 3. Jesus said, “you are already clean because of the word I have
spoken to you.” They were connected to
Jesus because they had believed Him – they had accepted His claims and His
teaching as truth. They had placed
their trust in Him for their lives and their eternity. They were connected to Him – but the very
next sentence says, “Abide in me, and I will abide in you.” Right away, Jesus charges His followers to
“not leave.” “Don’t slip away, don’t
become disconnected from me,” Jesus warns, “or you will bear no fruit.”
If we
allow ourselves to be disconnected from Jesus, our spiritual lives die, become
fruitless, and have no use to the Father. We will lose our love for the Lord, our love for each other, and we will
not be about the Father’s business. That’s what the paragraph from verse 9-17 implies. Obviously, everything hinges on us abiding
in Jesus.
Well,
I’ve done it. I’ve successfully taken a
2 minute talk of Jesus, and stretched it to 20, but folks, I think that this 2
minutes from Jesus have an eternity of meaning.
This
week on Wednesday, I came home from the office, looked at the roses sitting on
our kitchen table, saw them wilting, and realized that to a degree they
represented my spiritual life. I was
feeling disconnected. I was depressed
about sending two of my children off to college. I was anxious about the financial situation of the church. I was feeling, quite honestly, a little
weird about being full time at the church, and not working somewhere outside of
the church office. I was physically
worn out from running to the Upper Peninsula, then a mad dash to Madison, then
to the Twin Cities, all in three days. I looked at those roses, and the words of this week’s text came to mind,
and I felt disconnected, separated and useless to the Father.
Why? Had I abandoned my faith? No. I had simply allowed the life around me to distract me enough that I had
wandered away from that place of close fellowship with Jesus. I had stopped abiding in Him. My eyes were on the world around me, not on
Him. My time was absorbed by agendas
and budgets and I was not spending time with Him.
Can you
relate?
As I
think about it, there may be some here this morning who have never been
connected at all. You have never
allowed the teaching and the identity of Jesus to be real to you – you have
never believed His claims and trusted Him as your only way to God, and you have
never known life in Him. The Bible
tells us that when we believe in Jesus, we are grafted in to the vine – we
become part of God’s family – His Holy Spirit flows through us, giving us
eternal, fruit-filled life. If you have
never been made a part of God’s family, you can have a new birth today by just
praying and asking Jesus to do the miracle of forgiveness and new life in your
heart.
Some
here today have already experienced that new life, and you are enjoying the fruit
of full fellowship with God. These are
great days of growth and fruitfulness. You are using your gifts to serve him –
you are remaining in Jesus: praying, reading, serving, growing. Occasionally God comes and prunes a little
to allow you to be even more fruitful, and you can recognize His work, even
when it may be a little painful. My
word to you is this, “abide in Jesus.” Don’t leave that spot! With all
diligence, maintain that fellowship with Him. We will see next week, as we examine Jesus words regarding the ministry
of the Holy Spirit, that we have the promise that He will come and live within
us – that is a promise that He keeps – He is in us and will do all that He
promises to do. But here we see that we
have a part to play as well – we must remain in Him. Guard your heart. Carefully maintain the spiritual disciplines – that is our
responsibility. Study the Word. Pray. Fast. Give. Minister. Love. Tell others.
And
there are some today who are here, and you can’t take your eyes off these
wilted, fading roses; or maybe you can’t stand to look at them at all. It hits a little too close to home. What do you do when you feel disconnected? What do you do when you realize that you’ve
stopped abiding – you’ve allowed the world to crowd out your fellowship with
Jesus?
You come
back!
In Luke
15, Jesus told a story about a young man who became disconnected from his
father. He allowed the distractions of
the world to lure him away from fellowship with his dad. He totally immersed himself in everything
that he felt could give him life – but it all failed him. In verse 17 of that chapter it says, “When
he came to his senses, he said…’I will set out and go back to my father…’”
When
that son returned home, he felt ashamed and useless. He was sure he would never be considered his father’s son
again. He was content to be a slave in
his father’s house. But as he came
back, the father saw him walking down the street, ran out to greet him, and
said these words, “This son of mine was dead and is alive again…” The father restored the son, and welcomed
him back into the family.
“This
son of mine was dead and is alive again…”
Maybe
today you feel wilted, dead or dying. You may feel unworthy to be part of the Father’s family, and certainly
not His plans or work…I have good news for you! He welcomes you back with open arms – and He is able to do an
amazing miracle – He can take what is dead, and make it alive again! He can re-establish that relationship to
himself that will allow the life giving power of the Holy Spirit to flow in and
through you and give you life you never thought possible again!
Let’s
pray.
Father,
thank you for your amazing love and cares for your vineyard. Thank you for the care you take in pruning
and trimming and nourishing that allows us to live a life of abundant
fruitfulness. Thank you for desiring to
give that fullness to each one of us. Father, in this hour, draw those who have never known that life to
yourself. Call them from death into
life by your Holy Spirit. Graft them
into your family – allow your life to flow through them – may they know the joy
of abiding in you, and you in them.