Abiding in Christ: The Joy of Pruning

"remind us this morning that apart from that abiding we can do nothing we ask this in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen let me start with this confession this morning i do not like the snow i don't like playing in it i saw many of your pictures and videos yesterday all the fun and the laughter and the joy snow day and i don't really share in any of that i hate being cold me and katie benoit are people of heart together with that i think i hate even more sweating in my winter clothes of course i say sweating like my head and trunk and legs are just dripping while my hands and my fingers and feet and toes are going into hypothermic shock why can't our like have you thought about this why can't our feet and hands be hot alongside our torso and our head it's confounding to me but i hate that now now my son deacon is just the opposite dude got out there yesterday in the frigidity and sweated away for hours playing with the neighborhood kids throwing snowballs up and down hills on his sled or his bottom or his tummy there was all this joy and laughter of course i didn't know that because i was sitting inside but it was reported to me of that and one of the beautiful things about being a child is this joy and maybe another thing this dependency right like like deke still needs help getting all those winter clothes on and maybe you do too but i don't like that i don't like that i don't like that too and off he still needs a push down the hill maybe even sometimes someone to go down with him or go down first that hill he he needs the hot chocolate first thing back and and then maybe all day after i think i think there's this joy that that comes from this dependency and children help us see this mandy smith wrote a book entitled unfetter where she explores how childlike faith invites us to rest receive and and respond to god's grace with these fresh eyes and and and redeemer that's exactly what we're hoping for in 2025 as we consider what and who god is calling us to be that that we might be given fresh eyes to respond to the grace of john 15 namely that the jesus is the vine and you are a branch a dependent branch and a joyful branch making your home as eugene peterson says in the message version of this text making your home in jesus so that you will bear fruit and and one of those fruits we're told in verse 11 of our text is joy the the joy of being a branch do you know that joy mandy has a chapter she calls the void she says i i find myself tempted upon reading the words gaping void to run away and grasp onto any semblance of control i may think that i possess how dare i think my attempt for control will prove to me anything more than my fierce dependence on things outside of myself that the acknowledgement of this scary and unknown void may be the antidote to what smith calls adultish despair adultish despair the the snow makes me as an adult feel despair but but seriously how how's your adultish despair redeeming jesus says here to his friends going up that hill" [00:49:46]

"i want my joy to be in you and for your joy to be full so we start this morning by examining the joy of branchiness and it doesn't quite fit us this is what mandy smith says she says whether they call it a lack emptiness abyss void chasm wall or sacred wound all these thinkers and many others acknowledge that something is missing together they say that human life ultimately drives us all the way to the end of the world and that's why i'm here today to share with you some of the most powerful and most powerful things we can do to make sure that we all of us at full speed to the end of ourselves where we can no longer fix control endure or understand and thankfully not only do these wise friends present us with the terrifying reality of this abyss they find some kind of wonderful possibility hidden in all that's missing in a culture obsessed with consuming it will take some time to learn comfort with empty spaces in a culture ashamed of incompleteness it will feel raw to confess our need and this is where john 15 comes in for us the scripture calls us to a life full of joy but but one of the ways it prescribes us getting there is through the empty space the empty space of pruning what i mean by that it isn't by adding but by taking away and this probably grades on us a little if we're honest with ourselves like like when you started this new year what was on that long list what did you want to do add like we do words in our family what what words did you want to be affixed to you sure sure it might be take pounds away but you had to add things so you could take them away we like addition by addition but not addition by subtraction but jesus sees some potential in the work of pruning the the purged system the purified metal the pruned branch the process of having something cut away from us the embrace of the void and there's a real fear and pain for us there the the feeling of a phantom limb that's been cut away that the reality of our not enoughness if we're honest with ourselves one of the great struggles for us is we aren't the vine and we aren't the gardener. We're just a branch." [00:56:37] (159 seconds)


"So Smith goes on, she says, we're tormented by our humanness, ashamed of the things fundamental to our limited human state. Yet this experience of not enoughness is simply the human experience. And maybe this is why I hate the snow. It makes me feel vulnerable." [00:56:38] (18 seconds)


"The cold, the extremities, my sweaty body, my flailing on the ice and the snow, my inability to make an adequate snowball or a decent snowman, right? The weight of my body on the sled, which makes getting started on the hill without a push or some gargantuan leap with the sled grappled across my belly. And surely the resulting loss of air in the chest when I hit the ground to make myself go down the hill. But Deke, he's like used to this, the discomfort of it all." [00:56:39] (34 seconds)


"Aware he needs something or someone outside of himself, not surprised or ashamed." [00:56:40] (6 seconds)


"And it is this childlike dependence and experience of the void. Is that not a better possibility for joy than our adultish despair?" [00:56:41] (11 seconds)


"Jesus is inviting us into this place when he says, I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser." [00:56:42] (9 seconds)


"Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it might bear more fruit. Jesus is the vine. You are the branch and God is the gardener." [00:56:43] (16 seconds)


"Dale Bruner, the commentary says, God is the orchardist." [00:56:44] (4 seconds)


"An orchardist is a person who owns, manage or cultivates an orchard." [00:56:45] (7 seconds)


"It's his piece of land upon which the fruit trees are grown." [00:56:46] (5 seconds)


"And we read here in verse two, he takes away. Now, I want to stop here for a second because I think the ESV actually gets this phrase a little wrong." [00:56:48] (11 seconds)


"That Greek word can also be translated, take up or lift up. For example, when Jesus fed the 5 ,000, the disciples took up, that Greek word, 12 baskets of food." [00:56:49] (12 seconds)


"Simon took up Jesus's cross. John the Baptist says, behold, the lamb of God who takes up the sins of the world." [00:56:50] (8 seconds)


"Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And I want to stop here for a second, He says, behold, the lamb of God who takes up the sins of the world. And I want to stop here for a second, The orchardist gardener lifts up. Now, if you think about a vine, the vine has a natural tendency to trail downward, to grow along the ground. And when they are down there, they have a difficult time bearing fruit. The leaves get coated in dust. They can't receive the life and the light from the sun. When it rains, they get covered in mud. When this happens, the vine dresser takes takes that branch, washes the leaves and the shoots, and then carefully wraps the branch around the trellis so it can grow upward." [00:56:51] (40 seconds)


"And we're going to talk a little bit more about that next week, how we grow together in this trellis called the church." [00:56:52] (7 seconds)


"But the father, the orchardist, the gardener, he lifts up this failing branch, cleans it, helps it to flourish. God is the orchardist. He lifts up the branch that's not bearing fruit, so that it might bear fruit. And then, second surprise, the faithful Christian, the disciple, is cut back so it might bear more fruit. Prunes." [00:56:53] (28 seconds)


"That word, prune, we actually get our word catharsis, cleansing, purging from that word. And this is a little hint for us in this surprise." [00:56:54] (12 seconds)


"Cutting back is not a painless procedure." [00:56:55] (4 seconds)


"Now, I'm no real gardener. In fact, I'm a total hack. But I have come to understand a little bit about pruning. We, in Albuquerque, we had these sawgrass bushes in the front, and then we had these broom bushes in the back of our house, and they regularly needed pruning." [00:56:56] (17 seconds)


"If you go into a vineyard every year, you can see this. If you aren't used to seeing this, whenever you see people doing the pruning, it looks like a disaster." [00:56:58] (11 seconds)


"From all you can tell, the gardener is attacking these poor plants and trying to kill them." [00:56:59] (7 seconds)


"When you look up at the branch and the vines, it looks like they're bleeding. And when he's done, all over the ground are these beautiful things that look like they're going to die. They look like they should never have been taken off. Have you ever seen a skilled gardener prune a rose bush?" [00:57:00] (16 seconds)


"And the beautiful things that are strewn upon the ground. Why are all these things gone?" [00:57:01] (7 seconds)


"With a grapevine, you can either grow a lot of beautiful leaves, filling up a whole fence line, or you can have the biggest, juiciest, sweetest grapes you and your family have ever seen. But you can't have both. The orchardist's plan, is to prune, to thin out, to reduce, to cut off. You have to go against the plant's natural tendency." [00:57:02] (23 seconds)


"Grapevines get so dense, the sun and light won't reach down to all the branches. Left to itself, the grapeplant will always experience this growth, but not grapes. And from a distance, it will look fruitful, but up close, there is no fruit." [00:57:03] (17 seconds)


"And so the vinedresser removes growth that isn't fruitful, things that are dead and dying." [00:57:04] (7 seconds)


"All with the hope of what? Fruitfulness." [00:57:05] (4 seconds)


"Now don't forget what our text says. Every branch in me, that does not bear fruit, he lifts up." [00:57:06] (10 seconds)


"Branches that are in him, he doesn't throw away. They are in him, remember. Rather, if they are in him, he lifts them up. And some of us today, need to be lifted up. We're so... So discouraged." [00:57:07] (18 seconds)


"So beat down with how fruitless we have been or our lives have been." [00:57:08] (6 seconds)


"Wild animals have pulled on us. The weather has pummeled us. And you need to know this morning, Jesus lifts you up. All of you who feel fruitless, Jesus is in the business of lifting up. But some of us, some of us are right in the middle of pruning." [00:57:09] (26 seconds)


"We don't need the lifting up. We need the cutting away." [00:57:10] (4 seconds)


"And if the image of the gardener and the plant I gave suggest anything, you know what this means. It's painful. It's the work of the vinedresser beautifying you. And this in many ways is not just what we personally experience, but it's also what the church has been going through. Pruning is inevitable. It's not a sign of unhealth to be pruned and to lose things. But it's a sign that the vinedresser wants to keep you around and wants you to flourish. It's actually a sign of unhealth when nothing changes and everything gets overgrown and suffocates itself." [00:57:11] (36 seconds)


"All the followers of Jesus, all true churches will go through these seasons of pruning so that they can bear more fruit." [00:57:12] (10 seconds)


"I want you to think about that first, Redeemer as a church." [00:57:13] (4 seconds)


"What God has been taking us through for these last many years. And what he might be hopeful for in us in what's to come." [00:57:14] (12 seconds)


"Many of us sit here in these days and we lament what was. And maybe the what was is Jesus' faithful pruning of us for what will be. This is pruning. It's also true for you as individuals in your life. One of the most difficult things for us in this pruning process is nostalgia." [00:57:15] (29 seconds)


"The pain of the old wounds." [00:57:16] (4 seconds)


"We get nostalgic about our own individual lives with Jesus. And we think about what it used to be like." [00:57:17] (8 seconds)


"And yet this is very much God pruning us for what could be something that's going to produce more fruit in our lives if we abide in the vine." [00:57:18] (11 seconds)


"The temptation for us in these moments however is that we start to spin and to work and to strive in those moments instead of abiding in the vine. For the branch to be healthy, to reach its fullness, its potential, it has to be pruned. If you have a skilled gardener, they will tell you there is not one thing that is cut off that was not a loss to keep and that was a gain to lose." [00:57:19] (30 seconds)


"And this is the right that Jesus gets in our life when we move in with him. Now let me add this. Growers prune vineyards more intensively as the vine ages." [00:57:20] (14 seconds)


"The vine's ability to be fruitful increases each year but without intensive pruning as that branch ages, the plant weakens and the crop diminishes." [00:57:21] (14 seconds)


"Mature branches are pruned more aggressively to bring out their fruit." [00:57:22] (7 seconds)


"Early pruning might be when you're young and you're pruned, it might be those outward activities and priorities but as you mature, the pruning might touch more closely to your values and your identity. The shears cut closer as we get older and mature in Jesus, closer to the core of who you are." [00:57:23] (23 seconds)

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