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We have been walking with Yeshua through the book of John. We’re at the end of the life of the Most Important Man who ever lived. That man is also the Messiah and the Son of God and the one and only Savior of humanity, who alone is able to rescue us from the real and deadly forces of Satan and the demons, sin and the sin nature, death and Hell.
It’s Yeshua’s last day on Earth. It’s a special day – the first day of Passover. It’s the day Messiah will die a very special death, as God’s Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. That makes this day one of the most important days in history.
Yeshua will eat a final meal, a Passover seder with His most important followers, the men He will entrust with His on-going mission of world salvation. During the meal, Yeshua will give His disciples His final teachings. He will pray. Then, He will be arrested, tried, tortured and crucified.
Yeshua knew He was about to die. And He knew that He would be raised from the dead, and ascend to the right hand of God the Father in Heaven. And He knew that His disciples would need to be connected to Him, their living Lord, in order to have fruitful, productive, successful lives.
700 years earlier Isaiah had used a gardener and a vineyard that produced bad grapes to describe Isaiah’s disappointment at Israel’s lack of fruitfulness and God’s judgment that would ensue. Yeshua used a similar metaphor. I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener. 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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 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. 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. 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. If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.
Messiah taught His disciples that even though He will die, that will not be the end. He will rise from the dead. He will be seated at the right hand of His Father. There, He will be the all-powerful, all-present Lord of Heaven and Earth.
Their relationship to Him, which was so important to them, so precious to them, so live-enhancing, so beneficial, will be able to continue. He will not be accessible to them in the same way He was before. He won’t be physically present with them, traveling with them though Judea and Galilee, spending time with them, teaching them, correcting them, helping them. But, even though He, in His resurrected and glorified body, will be at the right hand of God in Heaven, He will still be present on Earth – but in a non-physical way, by means of His Spirit. They will still be able to have a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him. He will still be accessible to them – in fact more accessible than He was before.
They will need to remain in Him like a branch needs to remain attached to its vine: I am the true vine … Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. Yeshua is like a vine. He is full of divine life and energy. We are like branches. We are dependent on Him for life and energy. As the true vine, Yeshua has enough divine life and energy for millions of human beings to be connected to Him so they are drawing life and strength from Him.
The responsibility of His followers is to remain in Him, to be connected to Him so that they are able to constantly draw that life and energy from Him. How do they do that?
By knowing who He is – the dead but risen Messiah; the Son of God; the all-powerful and all-present Lord, the ruler of Heaven and Earth. When we know that, and we transfer our loyalties to Yeshua, we are joined to this living Lord. We become close to Him and He becomes close to us, so that He is in us and we are in Him. That is how we begin our relationship with the risen Messiah. Then, we must maintain that intimacy, that closeness, that nearness. We must remain in Him.
How? By being obedient. Remaining clean. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Sin, rebellion, disobedience damage our relationship to this holy, righteous, living Lord. It creates distance between us and Him. Sin, rebellion, disobedience lessen our desire to be close to Him, to serve Him, to live for Him. Sin diminish our fruitfulness. We remain in Him by not sinning, by being obedient to Him.
And when we fall short, miss the mark, make a mistake, cross boundaries we should not cross? Become unclean? We turn to God, with sorrow, with remorse, with repentance. We acknowledge our sin and we have His marvelous promise: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from anything we have done wrong. Then our relationship to Yeshua is restored. We are able to be close to Him once again. We are able to draw the full amount of life and energy from Him that we need. We remain in Him by being obedient and repentance and confession.
We remain in Him by practicing the spiritual disciplines. We build good spiritual habits into our lives which enable us to consistently draw the strength and energy from Him that we need.
We discipline ourselves to take in God’s Word on a regular basis by hearing it taught by a God-ordained teacher; and by reading and studying it on our own; by meditating on it, thinking about it and turning it over and over in our mind; and by discussing it with others.
We discipline ourselves to see God in creation. We look for the wisdom, order, design, symmetry and beauty He wove throughout nature, from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the largest galaxy. We become aware of the mathematical relationships and the chemical, physical and biological laws found in nature. We admire the sun, moon and stars, planets, comets and meteors, how amazing they are, how big the galaxies are, the order and design and beauty the cosmos reflects.
We have catalogued 1.5 million species of living things on Earth, and the total number may be multiples of that. We contemplate the incredible design revealed in those hundreds of thousands of different kinds of plants and trees, animals, birds, fish, insects, micro-organisms and other living things, and the amazing ways they interact with each other.
We observe water in its various forms: a droplet on a leaf; the dew on blade of grass or a spider’s web; the frost on a window; the fabulous crystalline six-sided structure of snow; the ice on a lake; the rivers and streams and lakes and oceans; the clouds and rain and fog.
We soak up the beautiful colors and forms in landscapes, sunrises and sunsets.
And because of all this beauty and design, our souls are drawn to the Creator and we are reminded of the great Designer and Artist who made them all – and that helps us remain in Him.
We discipline ourselves to pray without ceasing. We train ourselves to talk to God throughout the day, having a running conversation with Him, praising Him for who He is and the great things He has done, is doing and will do. And we thank Him for His many blessings and we ask Him to meet our needs and the needs of others.
The disciplines of fasting, silence and solitude help us remain in Him. When we are not focused on food and other regular activities; and when we are alone and silent, we are better able to hear the still small voice of God speaking to us.
Being an active participant in Messiah’s Community – regularly attending worship services; giving; serving the Lord within Messiah’s Community – help us remain in Him. It is impossible to be spiritually healthy, to grow to spiritual maturity apart from being an active member of Messiah’s Community.
Continuing Messiah’s mission of world redemption by witnessing, evangelizing, testifying what we know about Yeshua, sharing the Good News, and teaching those who are interested, help us remain in Him. This spiritual discipline is for each one of us, not just for professional clergy and those with a gift of evangelism.
Obedience; repentance when we sin; practicing the spiritual disciples enable us to remain in Messiah.
The one who remains in Him, who is continually drawing life from Him, will produce much fruit. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. 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.
Messiah wants us to produce fruit, and a lot of it. What kind of fruit? The fruit of Messiah-like character: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Love – a desire to help others in practical ways and spiritual ways. Love – not selfishness; love – not hatred.
Joy – a happiness not dependent on circumstances; not the happiness that comes from things going our way, or worldly success, or the enjoyment that comes from money or drugs or alcohol or sex or power over others.
Peace – a sense of wholeness and completeness, not a sense or restlessness or boredom or that something important is missing; peace that is based on knowing that we are right with God and will live forever; a peace not dependent on the absence of conflict or our circumstances being good; a sense that, no matter what happens, it is well, it is well with my soul.
Patience – the ability to endure life’s challenges with grace; not with irritation or anger; not quitting prematurely, throwing in the towel.
Kindness, goodness and gentleness; not harshness or a selfish callousness.
Faithfulness – loyalty to God; loyalty to the Word of God; loyalty to our word and to our commitments and vows and promises; not disloyalty to these things.
Self-control – the ability to control what we say and what we do and how we respond to various situations. Self-control is a tremendous blessing; lack of self-control can be very damaging to ourselves and to others.
The one who remains in Him, who is continually drawing life from Him, will produce the fruit of Messiah-like character.
The one who remains in Him, who is continually drawing life and energy from Him, will produce the fruit of new values, new goals, new priorities: a hunger and thirst for righteousness, not for money or worldly success; a desire to do what God wants, not what we want; a life dedicated to serving God, not self: a life devoted to proclaiming the Good News and building up Messiah’s Community, not a life lived in pursuit of power or pleasure or acquiring more and more things.
I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. And if we become detached from the living Lord? If we get disconnected from the One who is the source of divine life and energy, we produce no fruit. Spiritually, we wither and die. Spiritually, we become useless. Our lives become useless. And God, who is like a gardener, has no use for someone like that. 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 … My Father cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit.
There will be people who, in spite of everything that Messiah is, and everything He does, produce nothing useful: same old selfish ways of acting, same wrong ways of thinking; same old sins and bad habits; same old values; no desire to serve the Lord. They are useless to God, and He will remove them. One way or another, He will end their connection to Messiah. Don’t be like that. Don’t be one of them.
Becoming disconnected from Yeshua is usually a slow process, but sometimes it’s fast. The slow way is by losing our first love. Our zeal, our passion, our enthusiasm fades. We think less and less about God, the Bible, serving the Lord, telling others the Good News, the need to live a holy life. We fall back into our old bad habits and bad ways of thinking until we are reabsorbed into a godless, dying world.
The fast way to become disconnected from our living Lord is by getting caught in a sin cycle that we can’t break away from, a sin, or sins, that master us and rapidly ruin our life and relationship with Yeshua. 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 … My Father cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit.
Yeshua wants us to produce fruit, and a lot of it. But, in order for us to produce those good results, we will need to be pruned: My Father 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. A grape vine, if it is not pruned, will produce a lot of small, inedible or barely edible grapes. However, if the vine is pruned, the energy from the vine flows into fewer grapes, and those grapes get bigger and tastier, so that a lot of good grapes are produced. The same principle applies to us. We come into this fallen world deeply flawed. Our thinking is wrong about many things, even the most important things, like God and the need and the way to be reconciled to Him. We value the wrong things. We don’t value the right things. Our character needs improvement. Our goals are frequently off. To produce good fruit, to be spiritually useful, we need to be pruned. The Father needs to cut away harmful things, useless things so that the life flowing from Messiah will produce the maximum benefit to us.
He will cut away wrong ways of thinking, bad habits, sinful desires, poor character traits. He will cut off things that distract us from our spiritual responsibilities and our mission. He will prune bad relationships, too much emphasis on money or fame or pleasure or power.
How does God prune us? The easiest, least painful way, is by teaching us and correcting us. Good teaching helps us know what is right and what is wrong, what is wise and what is foolish, what is important and what is unimportant; what is beneficial and what is harmful. When we allow God to teach us, and cooperate with God when He corrects us, we are pruned.
God will also prune us in more painful ways. He will allow us to experience various kinds of trials. Difficult circumstances have a way of purifying us, helping us to refocus on what is important. Therefore we should expect to experience various kinds of trials, troubles and difficulties. And, when they happen, we do not resent God for allowing them to come into our lives. We endure them with grace and patience. We should expect to be pruned so we will become more pleasing to God and more spiritually productive.
One great fruit that will be produced in those who remain in Messiah: they will learn how to pray so that their prayers are answered: If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. When we remain in Messiah, and are connected to Him; when we know Yeshua’s teachings and are obedient to those teachings so that His words remain in us – we begin to understand Yeshua. We begin to understand what is important to Him; what pleases Him; what He wants. And so we begin to pray for the right things, the things Yeshua’s approves of, the things He wants, and our prayers will be answered.
This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples. God the Father loves God the Son. Just as a human father is honored when his children produce a lot of grandchildren who are successful and productive members of their society, so God the Father is honored when His Son has a lot of genuine disciples. And who wouldn’t want to honor God? So, let’s produce a lot of fruit and prove we are genuine disciples.
Let’s pray:
Father, help us to have fruitful, productive, successful lives.
Help us produce the fruit of the Spirit; the fruit of good character, good values; good priorities; the fruit of knowing how to pray.
Help us to remain in Messiah like a branch needs to remain attached to its vine, so we continually are able to draw life and strength from Him.
Help us know, really know, that Yeshua is the risen Messiah; the all-powerful and all-present living Lord, the ruler of Heaven and Earth.
Help us to be completely loyal to Him.
Help us to be obedient.
Help us to be repentant when we fail.
Help us build good spiritual habits into our lives.
Help us submit to Your pruning with grace and patience.
Help us produce a lot of fruit, and prove that we true disciples of the Messiah, which honors Him and honors You.