The Vine & The Branches | John 15:1-27

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Good morning, south. Good morning, south. Good morning students.

I appreciate that. It’s great to see all of your beautiful faces here this morning. And for those of you watching online, I’m confident that your faces are beautiful as well. So I’m still Sean, as Alex just introduced me just moments ago, and I have to be honest with you, admit. That it feels a little daunting to get up and to preach on the morning that an announcement like that is made.

I found about it, found out about it late on Thursday that they were gonna be doing this. And I just had these visions of you last night kind of sitting back in your chair and being like that’s cool. Let’s see what this guy’s got. No, I know that. You know that. Pastoring and shepherding is so much more than these teaching moments, but I did think that it would be really cool if we queued up one of those Linton prayer initiative text message, and it would go off right now, and you guys would all be getting pinged with messages that it’s time to pray.

Let’s pray for Sean that he would be empowered by the spirit and be able to bring a good message for our body here today. So why don’t we go ahead and do just that. Father God, I’m just so thankful for your presence in this room, Lord, the way that you know and care for each one of us individually.

Lord, I pray that we would get to know your love more and more, and that we would trust in your ways for our life. Father. Even when those ways may seem hard or confusing or counterintuitive, that we would trust and remain in you, and that we would experience the fruit and the joy that stems from that. We love you Lord.

Amen. All right. This morning we continue on in our study of John as we approach Resurrection Sunday. And right now we’re watching the final hours of Jesus’ Earth time on Earth unfold. And we’re in the middle of what many scholars refer to as the upper room discourse, which spans several different chapters, and it’s one continuous movement recounting Jesus’s final hours and time with his disciples.

The disciples that he deeply loves, and he wants to give them a message before he knows that he’s departing. It’s one that would bring them comfort and direction, and one that would also be meaningful to us here today to reveal once again, his ways and his heart. For us, this section portrays an intimate and urgent and compassionate.

Almost pastoral moment between Jesus and his disciples. And we see last week as a part of this, Alex reminded us that through this this message from Jesus to his disciples, that really God’s great purpose for them is their transformation, and that this transformation comes by way of the Holy Spirit.

Who is this agent of change and that the Holy Spirit longs to partner for with us, that he loves to partner with us on this moment of growth and transformation in our lives. And Jesus went on to promise saying, I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.

And this advocate, the Holy Spirit, will teach you all the things and will remind you of everything that I have said to you. It’s an important reminder to his disciples and to us here and now today that on this faith journey of transformation, we are not alone. We are given this advocate, this Holy Spirit, this wise counselor who will help teach us and to remind us of all the things that we see outlined in Jesus’ life and his example for us.

And as we just heard Kevin Reid in chapter 14, Jesus expands on this transformation process and he discusses the only way in which we can bear fruit. But before we jump into that, Alex noted a couple weeks ago that when a person is preparing a sermon, sometimes it can hit that individual in deep and profound ways.

Put another way. Sometimes when you’re wrestling with a passage, it can hit just a little too close to home. That this message is meant more for you or the person preparing than it is for the entire body that you are teaching it to, that you should be sitting in the front row, not up here teaching it from this platform.

Or maybe the back row for some of us is more preferable. And today I just want to say that is this moment for me. That this is a sermon for me that I needed in this moment that the words coming out of my mouth, the path looks something like this. But I do pray that it will resonate with some of you.

Either you’re going through something similar right now, or maybe you will in the future, but it’s gonna require me to be a little bit vulnerable to share a bit of my story. And that can feel a little exposing because sometimes when you’re preaching and the stories that you tell feel a lot more comfortable when they pertain to things that are long over and dealt with and resolved.

But my story is of the past couple of weeks of the things that I’m wrestling with now as I look at this passage and what God has for my heart in it, and that I hope that it will also be for your heart as well. So let us first look at the opening verses of this chapter. Jesus begins with, I am the true vine and my father is the gardener.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit. And while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Jesus leads this section with I Am, it’s one of seven IMS in the book of John. Where Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am the true nourishment that sustains eternal life.

He says, I am the light of the world. It is I who reveal and guide you out of spiritual darkness. I am the gate, I am the entry point to salvation. I’m the good shepherd who protects and sacrifices. I’m the resurrection and the life. I’m the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And now finally, I am the true vine. A callback to how Israel had once been described, but they had failed time and time again to produce any good fruit. We see this littered all over the Old Testament as we hear the stories of Israel, and we’re reminded here in Isaiah that the vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines that he delights in.

And he looked for justice, but he saw bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but he only heard cries of distress, whereas Jeremiah put it. The Lord speaking to the nation of Israel, I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against me Into a corrupt and wild vine?

But he, Jesus is now revealing himself as a true vine, the one that actually bears fruit, the fruit that Israel was incapable of doing on its own. And he also talks about his father, who is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit. But while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, prunes so that it will be more fruitful so that more growth can take place.

This is my house and this is my house. This is my house, and this is also my house. As you can see, we have a lot of house plants. And so this pruning process is very familiar to me. Not that I’ve actually done the pruning, but I have witnessed countless hours of my wife. Taking care of these plants that she adores.

She calls herself a plant mama, and she speaks to her children and she takes care of them, and she prunes off the dead leaves and the dead branches so that they can continue to thrive. So when I first saw P prune, I was like, oh yeah, I know what that is. I see it daily. And dusting and watering and all of the things, it’s quite the process.

But maybe this will also help us visualize this pruning process. This is a fruit tree in an orchard, and you can see here all the branches from the previous years’ growth have been pruned all the way back, almost so that the tree is unrecognizable. It looks as if the tree is almost dead. So what is this pruning process about?

I actually looked it up in this. The simple summary from chat, GPT. How many of us have gone there for simple summaries before shared with me that pruning is beneficial because it removes what is unhealthy. It directs energy towards healthy growth. It improves light and air flow. And I think most importantly here, it encourages fruits and flowers and it strengthens the overall plant.

Recently I was driving from here to Washington State. It was an incredibly long drive, but a beautiful drive and dotted all over the countryside where these vineyards, and I was noticing them in this, in the dead of winter, that they had all been pruned back. And it was a gray sky and cloudy and rainy, and these vineyards were everywhere.

And you can see here where there’s still the pruning to do. But over here is what I saw, and all of these vineyards just looked dead. It looked like a harsh in this brutal process, but I understood that it is good because even though the branches that had been trimmed back were bearing fruit the year before, it was a necessary thing for the farmer to do in order to bring forth new and beautiful fruit in the season to.

That if left undone, those vines were gonna become unruly and unmanageable and that they were going to begin to impede the life of the other new vines it would be draining to them. And so it was a good reminder for me that God prunes what drains life so that more life can flourish.

Which leads me to a bit of my story, a pruning event in my life, if you will.

As you heard from Alex here, just moments ago. I have not always been on staff at a church. I’ve not always been a youth pastor. This is a relatively new thing in my life. I have served in youth groups at my local church for the vast majority of my time since college. But I didn’t work here specifically for the better part of two decades.

I worked in healthcare first, more in a patient facing and research environment, and then I moved into health tech. And innovation. I worked at large companies and small startups. I saw it all, and it’s the place where I grew. It’s the place where I felt achievement and accomplishments, and most importantly it was my ministry field because we are all called to full-time ministry.

It is not just being on staff at a church or a missionary or working at a nonprofit where God places us in our neighborhoods and our communities and our jobs and wherever it might be, that is our ministry field. And so it was good for a long time and it bore good fruit for me, but then something happened and I think that all of us can remember it quite well.

COVID hit. And it turned everybody’s life upside down and my, I was no exception. And during this time, I recall just the 12 to 16 hours that I would work every single day. I know some of you got like COVID off because that’s awesome, but when you’re working in healthcare and specifically for an organization that developed a product that skilled nursing facilities around the country were clamoring for in order to be able to keep their patients and their families up to date with all of the visitation and regulations and updates that were going on, we had incredibly long days.

I was locked in my office. On Zoom for endless meetings and endless hours, and it was during this time that I began to put a lot of stress and a lot of pressure on myself. I felt like the success of this small startup kind of depended on me being able to carry this burden. And as this stress and pressure mounted, I felt this inner critic, this thing that had been with me since I was a boy, getting louder and louder.

I was constantly beating myself up, or I would see it leak into my home and my relationships with my wife and my boys. I knew that this thing was draining me, that it was no longer producing this good and healthy fruit. And then coming out of COVID, I be, as we’re reentering the world, I began having coffee and lunches and breakfast with some of my former students or mentors.

And I noticed that these were the best parts of my day. That these were the best parts of my week. They were the most life giving and joyous moments that I would have. And then I would go back to the grind and I felt God calling me. And just prompting me to pay attention to this. This is what I have been working in your life.

This is where I have you. I started to make note of it, but in the years to follow, I went back to an organization that I had worked with previously and then I went on to a new startup which I still help out with sometimes Now. But I, if I’m being honest, I knew even in the midst of those years and those projects that God was bringing this chapter to a close

and fast forward a bit. We come to the moment where my family and I were introduced to this community here at South, and it was not long after arriving that I was considered for this role. It came as a surprise as Alex mentioned. And initially I was like, this is pretty crazy and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I have a profession and a career. Thank you. I tried to make rational and logical arguments, at least from my perspective to God as he was prompting me with this invitation and asking me to consider and to accept it. And I think that we can see who won those late night debate sessions that I was having with God.

He’s pretty persistent when he wants to be, but God had pruned something from my life. He had removed something that had become a drain that was preventing other good things from flourishing. It was a beautiful new chapter for me and for my family. And I tasted new fruits from new branches that I could have never anticipated, and the sweetness of that fruit was beyond compared to what it replaced, which it sounds pretty good, right?

It is.

But deep down, I began to miss the thing that had been pruded. If I’m being honest, I don’t really know when it started to happen, but I began to feel its absence, not the job or healthcare or the companies or anything like that, but the perceived fruit of it all, the success and the people pointing to it.

I was aware of this missing branch in my life and the way that it looked and the way that it had felt, and it’s hard to describe. But the only way that I can put it is I went to this pruned pile of branches that you see here and I picked one up and I held it trying to convince myself and others that it was still good and still living and still a part of my life.

And it’s an interesting thing to describe ’cause I myself am still trying to make sense of it all. As I mentioned earlier on, this is not long resolved. This is something that this preparation and this passage has been doing in me,

but I did realize that I began to lament the things that I thought I was missing out on because of the pruning of the branches of my life. And so I busied myself with productivity and projects. I was seeking affirmation from all the places and simultaneously dismissing affirmation, and I know that’s confusing and I don’t really quite understand it either.

But I latched back onto these unrelenting standards that I had once held in my previous position. I was holding dead branches and painting the leaves. I trying to convince myself and others around me that it was still good and vibrant and living. I thought if I worked enough, if I was good enough, if I was perfect enough, that it would all sort itself out, that I’d be able to manufacture that fruit.

But as I, I also recognized that I was failing at this and I wasn’t seeing the fruit. And this deafening inner critic started to rise, that I had once known I was beating myself up ’cause I was exhausted holding onto this branch that was not connected to the vine. And so as I was preparing and I was thinking about this, I wonder to myself, have any of you guys experienced this?

This pruning process I think that we all have, but what is it that we do with it? What has been pruned in your life? Perhaps it’s something core and central to your identity.

Maybe it’s a relationship or friendships that no longer served you well or were edifying. Maybe it’s ambitions that you once held, goals that you wanted to achieve, but you recognize that those aren’t the things that God was calling you to. Maybe it’s a job just like mine or bad habits in your life, whatever it might be,

and I’ve had to consider why it is that I went back and I picked up that branch. And I think it probably represents itself in a variety of different ways, at least in my own life. Maybe it’s comfort. Maybe I liked the way that thing was, or the way that thing felt was known to me. Or maybe it’s my pride and my ego.

I liked the way that people pointed at those things. I had been conditioned by the ways of this world to have accomplishments and achievements. Equal love and acceptance. Or maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s fear that where that thing had been pruned, nothing else is going to grow. And you see the absence of it and nothing else growing there.

And so you want to just put it back and replace it. Maybe it’s comparison. You’re looking around at other people and you’re seeing what’s going on in their lives or in the environment that you once left and you want it back or maybe it’s impatience. Because this isn’t a light flip of a light switch, a new sprig doesn’t immediately bear fruit, and so we want to replace it with the thing that had been cut off,

but with my arm shaking. And tired and weary, trying to rely on myself and my abilities and my skills. I was assigned this passage and in a loving and gentle, but also unequivocal way, Jesus reminded me that he’s the vine. He invited me to remain in him as I also remain in you because no branch can bear fruit by itself.

Sean, you know this. It must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain me. And there was also this beautiful reminder that God is a good and a loving gardener as we see here. Oh, sorry. That was what Jesus had said to me, that fruit is not something that we can manufacture, but it flows from connection to him and then going on to God who had pruned that thing in the first place as a good and beautiful gardener.

As we see here in Isaiah, I, the Lord, watch over it the vineyard. I water it constantly. I know what is best for it, and I want it to yield good and meaningful fruit. It was a reminder to me that even good things can be pruned so that deeper and better fruit can be formed and that the pruning that God is doing is rooted in his love for us.

It’s intentional care. It’s not out of punishment or disappointment, but what it that, but it’s that he knows what is good for us. And don’t get me wrong, I know that God disciplines us. We see that very clearly in Hebrews and the good that can come from it. But this pruning process, this pruning of limbs that bore fruit at one time and removing it so new fruit can come forth that is just love and care for us.

And I want to return to one of the reasons why I think I went and I picked back up one of those branches. And I think it’s because we can be really hard on ourselves and we can be really impatient with ourselves, and we can look at the fruit that is forming in our lives. And we can be a little underwhelmed at times, especially when we’re looking around at and looking at the people who we look up to or live life with, or do Bible studies or small group with.

And I just wanna remind. That we will bear fruit. Jesus is clear about that, that if we remain in the vine, that we are the branches and we will bear much fruit. But it takes time. That transformation and growth take time. It’s not gonna happen overnight. It’s not gonna happen on the schedule that we hope that it does.

With south students. We’ve actually been going through the book of Galatians and looking at the life and story of Paul, and I’m reminded in this moment of him and his story after God had revealed himself to him, his son to him, and wanted him to go and preach to the Gentiles. At that moment, Paul shares, I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me.

But I went into Arabia and later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with CFUs, Peter, and stayed with him for 15 days, and it wasn’t even after that three years, he shares in the next verses of chapter two that he, it was then 14 more years that he went back to Jerusalem and met with the disciples and began to preach with the Gentiles.

Paul needed time. He needed time for those things that God had stripped away from him. I don’t know if all of those branches were bearing fruit but he needed time for growth and transformation.

Transformation takes growth and it takes time. Returning back to my story. Of this past month, I’m thankful for, and I can attest to the ways in which God can grab our attention. And for me in this season, one of those ways was the spirit speaking directly to me through other people. Just a couple weeks ago, my wife came to me and she said, Hey, what’s going on with you lately?

And I sat there knowing exactly what she meant. I said, what do you mean?

And with loving care and concern in her eyes. She shared with me that she felt that my inner critic had been on high alert that I was beating myself up, that I wasn’t myself and that quite frankly, she didn’t see much joy in me. In these LA in these last couple of weeks or months, whatever they might have been.

Obviously we’ve had more conversations since that. But to put an even greater point on it, then another dear friend of mine texted me and I didn’t respond. And then he texted me again, Hey, do you want to get together? I want to catch up and connect. And we ultimately did. And he also shared that he had concern for me.

And he shared that he had this dream about me and that he was trying to connect and catch up with me, and we were in this house or my house. And he would come into a room and as soon as he got there, I would disappear. And then he would find me in another room. And as soon as he saw me, I would vanish.

And he is, he’s telling the story. I’m trying to pray and think and interpret it. And I just felt God being like, oh, maybe it’s because. You don’t want anyone getting too close and seeing the branch that you’re holding up and trying to convince you yourself and others that it’s still good. You don’t want them getting too close to see that.

And then another individual from this body just a couple weeks ago came up to me and said that they had a dream about me and we didn’t really quite know what to make of it, but this stuff does not happen to me very often. I can count on two fingers how many times someone had said that they had a dream about me in this like sort of way, and she shared, I felt compelled to let you know that God loves you and he cares for you and he sees you.

I felt God wanting me to hear that over my blaring inner critic in the unrelenting standards I had. Been recently reigning Supreme in my life, as did my friend, as did my wife, and then we continue on with this passage as the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now, remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that you may. So that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete, that your joy may be complete. That the joy that my wife had just told me she felt was absent, could be complete if I remain in him and stop trying to manufacture it all. On my own. I felt the spirit grabbing me by the shoulders, wanting to remind me of this and reframe things for me.

That the pruning does not result in loss. It results in joy, it results in new growth, sweeter growth, better fruit root, and it’s been a beautifully hard couple of weeks wrestling with this passage, if I can admit that to you. I’ve been wrestling with myself and with God as I prepare for this sermon, and I immediately knew God’s heart.

For me. It came through looking in the mirror and tough conversations with people and naming things and facing things, and I was apprehensive about sharing ’cause I was disappointed in myself.

And I didn’t want you guys to be disappointed in me either. It felt really exposing. I prayed God, like why can’t I just preach a normal sermon, remain in Jesus and bingo, you get fruit, and the fruit of the spirit is X, y, and z. Go forth in, abide in Jesus is what I wanted to do. But I knew that was not the message that I needed this morning, and I don’t know who it will resonate with here today or when it might make sense, but that’s what he gave to my heart for this body, I needed to wrestle and reflect on the branches that had been pruned and picked up because I missed what they represented.

I needed to admit that those leaves that I had painted. Green in my shaking and exhausted hand. Were never going to produce fruit manufactured by me. And perhaps most importantly, I needed to contemplate the fact that unlike the branch on the vine in a real vineyard, we actually have a role to play in staying connected to the vine that abiding is active and surrender.

It that abiding is active, surrender independence. We actually have to do something about it. I love the way that DA Carson writes this in his commentary on John. The imagery of the vine is stretched a little bit when the branches are given responsibility to ma remain in the vine. The metaphor falls apart a little bit at this moment, but the point is clear.

Continuous dependence upon the vine, constant reliance upon him. Persistent, spiritual inviting. In by being of his life absorbing and taking it in. This is the indispensable and essential action condition or ingredient of spiritual fruitfulness. Reminding us what Alex said last week, God has a role to play and we have a role to play, to surrender and to be dependent on him, to remain in the vine.

And when we do remain in the vine, what? Is the result. My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. This is my command. Love each other. The result of remaining in this vine, remaining in this joy bearing fruit. The result of that is love. The ultimate fruit is love. How many times have we wished that Jesus would be black and white about a subject matter and he just isn’t?

And we have to infer things about and two and four based on this, that, and the other. But when Jesus makes a definitive statement, oftentimes it has to do with love. The first commandment is this, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor. This is a new command I have for you.

He told his disciples to love one another, that the world would know that you are my disciples by your love and thus be able to encounter me. This is my command. Love each other

that Jesus is the true vine, and that when we remain in him, we will bear fruit. And when we remain in his love, we will experience his joy. And that lasting fruit will bear love. And that fruit is not just for us, it is for the world. It is Jesus’ fruit for the world that we would, that they would encounter him through the love that we have for each other and that and the love that we are marked by.

So as we close, I would conclude with this final note for myself and for any others in the room who might at some point find themselves in a similar situation as me. God is a good and loving gardener who prunes things away from our life so that more life might flourish there. Take this branch if you’ve picked it up and set it down and you can hold me accountable to that.

There’s plenty of you in this room who I’m sure will have something to say. It’s exhausting to hold it there on our own. Because the invitation of Jesus is clear that we remain in the vine. He is the true vine that we trust the gardener, our father who loves us, and by intentional care cuts away the things that are no longer bearing fruit or preventing or draining something else that we would just allow the Spirit who is.

Happy to partner with us who is, as Carolyn told me today, is the sap running through the vine to allow the spirit to produce the fruit because when we do and we remain in his love, the fruit will come and the harvest will be plentiful.