THE VINE AND THE BRANCHES PT. 2
Text: John 15:1-17
Core Idea: Jesus loves us with sacrificial faithfulness, vulnerable openness, and grace-driven commitment – and we are now called to love each other with the same love that we have received. Let us obey knowing that it will bring glory to the Father and complete the joy of our hearts.
INTRODUCTION
Good afternoon, Lighthouse. If you have your Bibles, please turn to John 15:1-17. Let me read this for us.
1 “I am the true Vine, and My Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. 5 I am the Vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in Me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples. 9 As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love. 10 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. 11 I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are My friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit – fruit that will last – and so that whatever you ask in My name the Father will give you. 17 This is My command: Love each other.”
Amen. This is the Word of God for you today.
Well, last week, I shared that this text is part of what’s known as the Farewell Discourse because Jesus taught this to His disciples just before His death. Just moments from now, He’ll be in the Garden of Gethsemane – crying out and pleading that God would take this cup away from Him yet choosing to submit to the Father’s will in complete obedience. Soon, He’ll be humiliated by the very people He came to save and abandoned by His friends. He’ll bear our sins on the cross and receive the fullness of God’s wrath on our behalf. So, knowing that His time was coming to an end, Jesus wanted to prepare His disciples for what was to come. Last time, we answered three questions:
· HOW CAN WE GROW? (OUR UNION WITH CHRIST)
We learned that our growth is possible because of our union with Jesus. If we remain in Him, we will bear much fruit – apart from Him, we can do nothing. Discipleship is about learning to remain in Jesus.
· HOW DO WE REMAIN? (WORD AND PRAYER)
We learned that to remain in Jesus is to depend on Jesus – and to depend on Jesus is to remain in the Word and prayer. In other words, if you truly want to grow this year, you’ll not be able to do so apart from spending your time in Word and prayer. A disciple is someone who delights in the Word and prayer.
· HOW DOES THE GARDENER HELP US GROW? (PRUNING)
We learned that the Father prunes, refines, and disciplines us because He wants us to grow. The act of pruning or the process of sanctification is a precise work of God and is born out of His love for us. Then as disciples of Jesus Christ, we ought to trust God and invite Him to lead and shape us for this is how He will transform us to be more like His Son.
Then with these three things in mind, we’ll look at three more questions today:
· WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE OF OUR GROWTH? (OBEDIENCE)
· WHAT IS THE COMMAND? (LOVE EACH OTHER)
· WHAT IS THE RESULT OF OUR OBEDIENCE? (JOY)
1) WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE OF OUR GROWTH? (OBEDIENCE)
How can we know that we are growing? Verse 10, “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.” Jesus told us that we will bear fruit and we will grow if we remain in Him. Then here, Jesus was basically saying, “I’ll know you’re remaining in My love, in Me, if you keep my commands.” In other words, the evidence of our growth is obedience to His commands. Now, this could make Jesus sound like a taskmaster – someone who just gives us a list of things to do and expects us to obey at all costs. But if we look at the text carefully, we’ll see that Christian obedience is unique because it grows out of love. Here’s what I mean: notice that verse 10 comes after verse 9, which says, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.” Just before He talks about obedience, Jesus first reminds His disciples of His complete love for them. Jesus invites His disciples to remain in His love first before teaching them that to remain in His love is to obey His commands. Why is this important? Because it shows us that Christians don’t obey God to get His love – they obey because they’re already loved by God.
When people are in love, you might have heard them say something like this to their beloved: “Your wish is my command.” Have you ever said something like this? Maybe you haven’t said this exact phrase but I’m sure this was the attitude you had in the way you treated your beloved. When Alicia was pregnant, that was the mindset I had in the way I served her. I was ready to go anywhere to get her anything at any time if she wanted something. Thankfully, she didn’t demand anything too difficult – the only out-of-ordinary thing was that she wanted A&W burgers at midnight. And fortunately, there was one near our place that was open 24/7. Now, I wasn’t forced to do this; I genuinely wanted to do this. This was no burden at all. This phrase, “Your wish is my command,” articulates what everyone is feeling and thinking when they’re in love with somebody. If your beloved says, “I want this,” you don’t say, “What do you want now?” No, you say, “You got it.” And this is how Christians obey Christ – it’s not out of duty but it’s driven by our love for Him. We’re overflowing with His love for us – and our obedience is simply our way of expressing our love for Him.
Then we know we’re growing as disciples of Jesus Christ if we’re growing in our love for Christ and if that love is being expressed with our joyful obedience. We know we’re growing when we begin to see the Word not as a list of dos and don’ts but as a way to express our love to God. Let me give you an example of what this could look like. If you’re following our Bible reading plan, you should’ve read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 this past week where Jesus radically transforms our worldview and understanding of life. Now, what was your attitude toward His teaching? What did it reveal about your heart? When Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others” (Matt. 5:16), did you respond with joyful anticipation for the next opportunity to share the gospel with someone or did you respond with fear, reluctance, or excuses? When Jesus said, “Anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment” (Matt. 5:22), did you respond with humble repentance – vowing to guard your emotions, or did you respond with frustration, justifying your actions? When Jesus said, “Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28), did you ask for His forgiveness – committing to do everything in your power to remain holy and pure before the Lord or did you respond with apathy and a hardened heart that said, “Who in the world can live this way”? When Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44), did you lift up a heartfelt prayer for those who you hate, those who have hurt you, those who have made your life miserable, or did you simply ignore it saying, “I’m not ready for that. In fact, they don’t deserve my mercy, my forgiveness, my love”? Brothers and sisters, when you read the commands of God, the Words of Jesus, do you respond with the heart that says, “What is it now?” or “Lord, Your wish is my command because that’s how much I love You”? Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to be perfect in your obedience, but it does mean that you’re making progress to grow this way day by day. So, brothers and sisters, let’s not read the Word just for information but to place it in our hearts so that it’ll become part of us, so that it’ll dwell in us and shape us. We know we’re growing when we’re joyfully obeying the Word of God.
2) WHAT IS THE COMMAND? (LOVE EACH OTHER)
What’s the command that we ought to obey? Verse 12, “Love each other as I have loved you.” It’s the command to love. Now, the key to understanding this is to know the nature of love – namely, that love always flows outward. That’s the logic we see in Jesus’ teaching. Verse 9, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.” And verse 12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” Do you see the flow of love that trickles down from the Father, to the Son, to us, and now, to others through us? Love always begets more love. When we’re truly loved, we just can’t help but to overflow with this love. We just can’t contain it to ourselves – our love will spill out of us. My dad is someone who I love, respect, and look up to because he’s someone who truly aims to live a life worthy of the gospel. He loves God wholeheartedly and his love for God gets visibly expressed in the way he loves me and my brother. He finds great joy in spending time with us, and he genuinely wants to know what’s on our hearts so that he can pray for us and support us in any way possible. I know that my brother and I are greatly indebted to his love for us. Now, in many ways, the way that I love my two sons is the way that I have been loved by my dad. I’m just following his example. Just as I have been loved, I want to shower my children with so much love that they would be overwhelmed and overflowing with this unshakable joy. And my prayer for them has always been the same – that they would know Jesus to be their Lord and Savior and that they would begin to share the love that they have received with kindness and gentleness for others. Love always flows outward – it always reproduces itself. Then Jesus’ command is doable because all of us have been loved by Him. 1 John 4:19-20 says, “We love because He first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”
Then at this point, the most important question we need to ask is, “How did Jesus love us? And how does that begin to shape the way we love others?” This is what our text teaches us: First, Jesus loves us with sacrificial faithfulness. Today, technology enables us to feel like we’re faithful to our friends without actually having to be present with them. Think about the ways we are “connected” through texts, social media, emails, or phone calls. Now, don’t get me wrong – these technologies are valuable and helpful. But what happens when this friendship becomes difficult, costly, and burdensome? We always have the option of logging off, closing that tab, or ignoring that text. We get to control the terms of what it means to be “present” for a friend. But this is not how Jesus loves. Verse 13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends.” Jesus makes it clear: the King of glory gave up everything He had and was born in a manger not to be served but to serve and die for our sins. But a more shocking truth is found in Romans 5:8, which says, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The distance between the worthiness of Jesus the King and the unworthiness of us the sinners was unfathomably great. Yet He chose to save us even at a great cost to Himself – all because of His love for us.
Second, Jesus loves us with vulnerable openness. Verse 15, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you.” There’s this self-disclosure, transparency, and honesty. A servant doesn’t need to know why the master does what he does. The servant merely needs to know what the master is asking for – and he ought to obey. But Jesus doesn’t treat us like a servant – He doesn’t create distance with us. Instead, He calls us friends – and He openly reveals the very things that are in His heart. There’s nothing held back. He lets us completely in for us to know that the Master’s business is the salvation of the world. And He now invites us to join Him – to serve alongside Him.
Lastly, Jesus loves us with grace-driven commitment. Verse 16, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.” Jesus is committed to us – His love does not give up or go out when the going gets tough. This is the love that sees itself all the way to the cross. Now, other than Jesus, we actually see another example of this kind of love in the book of Ruth. Ruth and Naomi experienced incredible hardship when both of their husbands died in Moab. So, Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “Why don’t you go back home? I’m going back to Israel. Coming with me will result in more trouble for you. Return to your people. You’ll be happier there.” But listen to what Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me” (Ruth 1:16-17). Ruth was essentially saying to Naomi, “No matter what, I’ll be with you to the end. Come what may.” That is committed love. And that’s the love of Jesus for us. The night before His death, Jesus was in the Garden, praying, “Father, if it’s possible, take this cup away from Me.” He was basically asking, “Is there another way?” – knowing how crushing this will be. And yet the very next breath, He said, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39). Come what may.
Jesus loves us with sacrificial faithfulness, vulnerable openness, and grace-driven commitment – then this is how we ought to love each other. Jesus is calling all of us to be a friend like this in someone else’s life today – a friend who will gladly and intentionally give up our lives for them, who won’t hold anything back but let them in completely, and who will be committed to the very end. This is so important because if we look at the world around us, it seems like many Christians are known more for what they’re against than for the intensity of their love. Then Jesus is inviting us to change that by loving them sacrificially, openly, and gracefully – because when we love like this, it will actually be the most compelling witness for the beauty of our faith. In fact, this was how the early church grew. Right around the third century, there was a devastating plague that swept across the Roman Empire. At its height, it was reported that around five thousand people were dying per day in the city of Rome alone. You can imagine how contagious and fatal this plague was. So, understandably, people began to flee the cities and many of the sick were quickly abandoned – left to die alone. But there was only one group of people that stayed behind – Christians. Christians were not only lovingly and sacrificially caring for their own people (their family and church members), but they were also going out to whomever they could – to take care of them, attend to their needs, and see them all the way to their death. And even though many Christians had died for their effort (because they too were infected), nothing stopped them from ministering to the sick. Listen to what Tertullian, a Christian scholar at that time, wrote, “It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’” What force was more powerful than the plague? Love. And it was the quality and the intensity of their love that attracted the world to Christianity. Brothers and sisters, this is the kind of love that we received from Christ, and this is the kind of love that we ought to now share with others.
Then let me ask you, “Is this the kind of love that’s characterizing you today? Are these qualities visible in the way you walk with other believers – to help them move closer to Christ? Are you deliberately investing your time, money, and energy to disciple people?” I say this because I firmly believe that discipleship is an act of love. Then are you faithfully praying for other believers? Are you lovingly speaking the truth to them? Are you openly sharing your lives with them? Are you intentionally leading them to remain in Christ? And are you patiently encouraging them to remain in the Word and prayer? In contrast, are these qualities visible in the way you walk with other non-believers – to help them see Christ better? Are you purposefully meeting with them? Are you earnestly sharing the gospel with them? Are you joyfully living out the gospel for them to see? And are you persistently inviting them to turn to Christ? This is what we should be known for. The thing that should mark us, identify our community is that we’re a group of people who are known for our intense, sacrificial, truthful, totally committed kind of love for others around us.
3) WHAT IS THE RESULT OF OUR OBEDIENCE? (JOY)
Let’s go back to verse 11, “I have told you this so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” Jesus desires us to obey His commands because He wants to complete our joy. The word “complete” in Greek means, “Filled to the brim or overflowing.” So, Jesus was saying, “Obey because I want to offer you the fullness of joy.” Now, does this surprise you? I ask this because sadly, many of us think that God is actually a major killjoy – that God is out there to give us rules to follow, to create rigid boundaries to control us because that’s the most important thing for Him. But in this text, Jesus tells us that He is after our joy – to see our joy being completed in Him. The purpose of the commands is to place His joy in us.
Now, this idea is even more shocking if you remember the context of this passage. I shared that this is the Farewell Discourse of Jesus. Jesus was about to get betrayed. He was about to go to the cross. And yet, the closer Jesus got to His death, the more He talked about joy. I say this because in the Gospel of John, the word “joy” appears nine times – and seven of those appear in the Farewell Discourse. Do you know what this means? It means that the kind of joy that Jesus offers is not just this feeling of happiness but this steadiness, peace, and hope that enables us to stand firm even through the fiercest storms. This is the kind of joy that Jesus is offering us today.
Then before we finish, “How do we get this joy?” We get this joy only through the fruitful obedience of Jesus Christ. On the cross, He received the fire of judgment so that we would only experience the fire of refinement. On the cross, He became a fruitless branch, and He was cut off from the Father on our behalf. As He hung upon that dead tree, He turned that tree into the most fruitful of all trees so that whoever surrenders themselves at the cross would have life and life to the full – the joy unshakable. Hebrews 12:2 says, “[Fix your] eyes on Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus went to the cross because of joy. He went to the cross because His joy would be made complete in redeeming us to Himself. He went to the cross because our joy would be made complete in Him. He located His joy in us. Our joy was His joy.
What does this mean for us? If you’re not yet a believer, this joy is offered to you today – all you need to do is remain in Christ. And you can do this simply by placing your trust in Him and believing that what Jesus did on the cross was for you. May you receive and taste this joy today. If you’re a disciple of Jesus Christ, I simply invite you to locate your joy in the joy of others this week. Find a way to bring joy to someone else. Think through how you can do that this week.
CONCLUSION
Lighthouse family, Jesus loves us with sacrificial faithfulness, vulnerable openness, and grace-driven commitment – and we are now called to love each other with the same love that we have received. Then let us obey that command knowing that it will bring glory to the Father and complete the joy of our hearts. This is how we will grow this year.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1) The evidence of our growth is obedience to His commands (v. 9). Then how can we cultivate a heart that loves the Word and desires to obey the Word?
2) Jesus loves us with sacrificial faithfulness, vulnerable openness, and grace-driven commitment – and now, He calls us to love each other the same way. Is this the kind of love that’s characterizing you today? What makes it hard for you to love others this way? How can we grow to love this way?
3) Jesus desires us to obey His commands because He wants to complete our joy (not to control us). How does this change our relationship with Jesus? Share how you can locate your joy in the joy of someone else this week.