Good morning again, church family. Hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas. It's good to see everybody, and I'm excited to be able to dive into the Lord's word.
But before we do, most of you have heard at this point that we're worshiping without one of our brothers this week, as the Lord has seen fit to take Bill Seeley home to glory with Him. And so, while we praise the Lord greatly for His faithfulness, His faithfulness to His promises, we grieve, and we grieve with the Seeley family.
And so, as we do that, would you join me in a word of prayer for them and for their family?
Heavenly Father, I thank you and I praise you that you are faithful. As we look at your word, as we study your word, as we're about to do here this morning, we see your faithfulness to yourself and your faithfulness to your promises over and over again.
And Father, I pray that you would keep the Seeley family close to our minds and our hearts, that as we go about our worship service and our afternoon and tomorrow and in the coming, honestly, weeks and months and year, we would be real intentional to be lifting up Nancy to you and Alicia and James and Chad and their families.
Lord, we're all shocked to hear that you saw fit to take Bill home to be with you. And so, as we go about our worship service, we continually learn how to handle unexpected circumstances in our lives. Help us to do so with faith, looking to you, and with great care for one another as we love each other in the body of Christ.
Thank you for loving us first so that we might love you and love others flowing from that. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
Amen.
Well, I hope you still have your Bible app open. Just want to ask you to keep your place there in John 15. We're going to reference verses today.
What I want to help us see this morning is we're going to introduce our series that Joel mentioned, "Abide: Cultivating Intimacy with Christ." We're going to do that this morning by looking at John 15 at a very high level. So it's going to be like a flyover.
You might ask questions like, "Oh, why didn't he say more about that?" or "Why didn't he say more about that?" Trust me, I am working hard to refrain from saying all the things about all the things. But it will come in the next few weeks, several weeks, really, as we're going to spend a good bit of time here in John chapter 15.
Then we'll kind of build out from there as we consider how spiritual disciplines, or habits of grace, as some would call them, help us in our abiding.
But it's really important that we understand the concept of what it means to abide or to remain in Christ, because sometimes we can get focused on the activities of abiding, forgetting what the real goal of abiding is. So that's why we're going to really camp here quite a bit.
But there's a warning for us as well. As we consider moving into 2025, which I guess you don't get to consider whether you move into 2025 because on whatever it is, Wednesday maybe, is that the first? You're going into 2025.
So it's going to be there. But as we think about our lives and our schedules and our pocketbook and our relationships and our activity calendars and all of our priorities and the decisions that are before us to make, some things we're going to say yes to, some things we'll say no to, how do we make those decisions?
And I want us to really need to consider that as we think about the upcoming year. We must do it by considering what areas of our life are always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, bearing fruit for Christ.
And what areas of our life are not bearing fruit for Christ? Because it's possible that if we don't have a Christ-centered or a biblical mindset, in other words, you can have a desire to glorify God. But if your desire to glorify God is according to your own thinking versus what God says in His word, you will be out of step with the Spirit, and you'll be confused because your heart is good and right to want to glorify God.
But if we're out of step with God's word, then you're going to miss the mark and be confused by why things aren't working the way that you thought they ought to. And so we need to go into this year being real intentional to say, "Lord, help line me up with your word. Help me to be as calibrated as I can with your word so that as I strive to love you and make decisions and engage in relationships and conversations, as I set new goals, I'm setting goals for the right areas or in the right way."
It's possible to set goals that are completely out of step with God's word. And yet, in and of themselves, they might not be bad goals. But, well, I guess if they're out of step with God's word, they're bad goals.
But what I mean is they might not seem at face value like they are the wrong kinds of goals. So that's why we want to work hard to really draw near to God through His word and make sure that we are walking in step with Him there.
So here, Jesus is talking to His disciples. This section of the Bible has become pretty well known or is referred to as Jesus' farewell discourse, which is John 14, 15, 16, and 17. Chapter 15 is really at the heart of the farewell discourse.
And so, we're going to draw other aspects into it, but this is really the heart of what Jesus is getting at here. Jesus speaks about Himself through a number of metaphors. In John 8:12, He describes Himself as the light of the world, saying, "Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
In John 10:7, Jesus is the door of the sheep. John 10:11, a few verses later, He describes Himself as the good shepherd, who lays down His life for the sheep. And here, Jesus is the true vine, and the Father is the vine dresser.
Verse 1 of chapter 15: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine dresser." Now, in the Old Testament, the vine or the vineyard was often a symbol for Israel. You can see that especially in Isaiah 5 and chapter 27 in Jeremiah, and many, many other passages, or several other passages, I should say.
But Israel's failure to be a fruit-bearing people brought God's judgment upon them as a people. Jeremiah 2:21, God complains about Israel. He says, "I planted you a choice vine, holy of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?" Wouldn't that be an awful thing to have the Lord say about us as His people, or as a church, or as individuals?
Isaiah 5:7 says similarly, "For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant planting. And He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry."
So, Jesus is saying here, He is, in fact, the true vine, and His followers are called to produce fruit in keeping with His word by abiding in Jesus, which is a synonymous way of saying keeping His commandments, right?
Look at a couple of verses here in chapter, in verse 2 and verse 6. Jesus says, right at the outset, "Every branch of me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every branch in me that does bear fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit."
Verse 6: "If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered and thrown into a fire and burned."
So, very briefly today, again, we'll look at this more next week. Jesus is saying that everyone who does not bear fruit in keeping with repentance is not a genuine fruit.
Now, there are different perspectives on this. Some will argue that this means that if there are genuine believers who are in persistent, willful, persistent disobedience, that the Lord will actually take them home early.
Well, I say we say early, but it's according to the Lord's timing for what is right. And there are people who make that argument. I think that that's a plausible argument, but I don't think this is the passage for what the Lord is saying there.
In this passage, I believe that the Lord is saying that if you're not a genuine follower of Christ, you're going to be taken out. You're going to be taken away. He's going to cut off the things that are growing.
Maybe the people who say they're part of the body of Christ, and they come in and they go out, and we fellowship with them. We rub elbows with them. At the end of the day, we don't truly know anybody's heart.
And so He takes them out. He takes them away. He pulls them from the church or the visible church so that the actual visible church, the true church, Christians, can grow as they are to grow.
And in our lives, in the body of Christ, He prunes us as well so that those who are bearing fruit will bear more fruit because that's the goal of what you want with trees and shrubs and plants, etc.
Matthew 15:13, Jesus says, well, I should say, He's talking about how you can actually live contrary to God's word if you are focused more on keeping the tradition than on keeping Jesus's teachings.
And so the disciples say, "Well, aren't you worried that if the Pharisees overhear this, they're going to get angry?" And basically, Jesus says, "Well, I don't really care about that."
Now, the way He says it is like this: "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up," right? So look at Matthew 15 for more of that context of what's happening there.
But you see that every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let me front-load some application here for you.
Okay. The only way for us to produce the right kind of fruit is as those who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus through faith is to focus on abiding, which means staying, keeping, enduring in Christ.
Now, there's a lot of questions about that. There's a lot of questions about that. There's a lot of questions about what this word "abide" actually means. It means remain. It's really simple in one sense.
Now, those conversations aren't all bad conversations, right? It's people trying to really understand the word, but in its most simple sense, in fact, many other translations translate the word "remain." Wherever you see the word "abide" here, you could just, in your mind, you could say the word "remain," and you would be accurate, right?
So here's really the main idea. Point number two here, and our application, which is abide in Christ by continuing fellowship in His word and keeping His commandments.
Now you think, "Well, how do I fellowship in His word? I've never fellowshipped with a book before." Well, that's because the Bible is not a textbook. The Bible is God's living word, which the writer of Hebrews said is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, profitable for dividing soul and spirit, and joint and marrow, discerning the thoughts and the intents of the heart.
That's why often when people come and would talk about an issue, or if I need to talk with someone else about an issue, we go to the word because it's the word of God, not another's opinion, and not my opinion to someone else that helps us discern what's happening in somebody's heart.
I don't know what's happening in someone's heart ever. I don't know what's happening in my heart most of the time, let alone trying to sort it out for someone else. So we go to the word of God, and God promises to work among believers through His word and by the power of the Holy Spirit to discern the thoughts and the intents of our hearts.
And so to continue fellowshipping in His word is to fellowship with God. And so I have great fellowship with God. I just don't read the Bible much. I'm going to tell you you're wrong because the Lord says that we must fellowship with God through His word.
His word is what is true, not our intents. His word is what is perfectly accurate. If you read Psalm 119 and many, many, many other places in the Bible, you see how the psalmist loved God's word, the scriptures.
So we need to be fellowshipping with God by being in His word. That's abiding in Christ is to remain in Him by remaining in His word.
We also know that because He talks about the principle of praying. And He talks about the principle of obeying His word.
Now we live in a day and age, and I do this quite a bit too, where we talk about wanting to get our heart motive in the right place and not just going along and following the rules for the sake of following the rules. Right.
And that still remains true, but it would be misleading and, in fact, incorrect to say, "Well, you don't have to obey God until you really understand it and your heart's in the right place."
No, we often obey, and then our heart follows, right? It doesn't always happen like that, but we are called by God and by His word to obey His word.
When we try to press one another to obey God's word, I've said this before, that is not legalism. I've had people say this at times, "Well, that's just legalistic to press people to do all the things that God talks about."
No, it's a pursuit of righteousness. Legalism is when we add rules that God has not given us in His Word or we take something away from something that God has commanded in His Word and we attach it to salvation.
Those are things that are legalistic. But striving to live a faithful, gospel-centered, Jesus-centered, word-filled life of righteousness is not legalism, brothers and sisters.
It's a pursuit of righteousness that we've got to do. We've got to be pursuing the Lord this way. Now, I want us to be careful, too. Abiding is not some sort of a mystical union with Jesus.
Okay? Now, there's a whole lot that can be said here. We're not going to take it up much today. But there's a lot of interesting conversation about what it means to actually be in Christ.
And some people can get fairly mystical about what that looks like. And we have to be careful about that. Because in one very real sense, if you believe that you are a sinner and that God, the holy, righteous God, sent His Son to be born of a Virgin Mary and to live a perfect life, never to sin, doing everything He wants to do, doing everything right, never doing anything wrong, and to willingly give His life at Calvary, and on a profession of your faith, you believe in your heart, "I'm a sinner, God is holy, I believe what the Bible says about Jesus, and I trust Him, and I want to follow Him, and I want to walk with Him, and I want to grow in Him."
You might not say it like that. You probably won't say it like that right away, and that's okay. But the Bible says that you are in Christ. You're His. You're covered in or under His righteousness.
And He has absorbed the wrath of God on behalf of you. He has fully covered your sin. That's why 1 John says that Jesus is our propitiation. That means the one who has satisfied the wrath of God on your behalf.
So in one sense, don't overcomplicate it. There's two sides to this coin, right? Continuing in fellowship with God through His Word on the one side, and keeping His commandments on the other.
You can't do one without the other. You can't do one without the other. The disciples probably just thought very simply of this. Abiding in Christ means something along the lines of loyalty and fellowship that would continue as they obeyed His word.
We're going to obey what Jesus is teaching and the scriptures. To them, the scriptures would have been much of what we call the Old Testament now. They didn't have it all then, but they would have referred to the scriptures.
It's interesting. This is an aside. I'm going to be real careful here. When Paul is training up Timothy, he says the scriptures are wise to make you wise. I'm sorry. The scriptures are sufficient to make you wise unto salvation.
He's talking about the Old Testament in that passage. The Old Testament is enough to point people to the coming Messiah. They wouldn't have used the language we use today.
But they would have known what it meant to look to Jesus, the Messiah who came, and follow Him by keeping in step with the scriptures and obeying His word.
Listen to a few verses in this chapter. There are three principles that we see here. Verse 14: "Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me."
Verse 7: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."
Verse 10: "If you keep my commandments." These are conditional statements, friends. "If you keep my commandments." Implied here, then you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.
You see the connection between abiding or remaining in Christ and keeping His commandments and prayer and abiding in the Father's love. These are main themes of John 15:1-17.
And honestly, they're main themes of the entire New Testament and the entire Word of God. And so if remaining in Jesus was some kind of like organic union or a mystical union, whatever that might mean to different people, then it would be a given that if you're united with Christ, then all of these things follow.
But here it's very tightly woven to the commandments that God has given us and our God-honoring, Christ-centered, humble efforts to keep His commandments, never to earn salvation, but always out of love, out of a demonstration that we are His children, His ways are best, and we want to follow Him with our whole hearts.
But if remaining, as it is, is a metaphor for continuing in fellowship and loyalty, then keeping His commands, obedience to His commands, is very clearly important.
Even to move out of John the Evangelist's writing here, even when the Apostle Paul, he goes to great lengths in Romans to communicate that a person's relationship with God through faith.
Let me rephrase that. I just put the emphasis on the wrong word, and that confused what I said. Paul goes to great lengths to communicate that a person's relationship with God is through faith.
But listen to what he says in Romans chapter 6. Now, this is right after the passage you've heard plenty of times from this pulpit, which is talking about, we often use it as we talk about baptism, because it's the picture of being buried in Christ, by faith, and raised to walk in newness of life.
In verse 10 of that same chapter, not much longer, he says, "Now, listen to verse 11." So, I can't overcome this sin. Yes, you can, or we're calling God a liar. It doesn't mean it's easy.
It doesn't mean you don't need to pull a team of people around you and say, "I'm really struggling with this one. I need your help." That's exactly what we're supposed to do, as a matter of fact.
But first, you've got to consider yourself dead to sin and alive through Christ. That's the whole picture of baptism. And then he says very clearly, "Let sin not reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions."
In other words, Jesus has perfectly done for you what you cannot perfectly do for yourself. Therefore, our relationship with God the Father is initiated through faith in Christ's death to sin and life to God through righteousness.
But our life in Christ is shown to be genuine through fellowship and loyalty to Him as we keep His commandments.
Which brings me to my third point, and really our main application. As we approach 2025, approach it with a similar mindset.
Now, here's where I'm moving back from the text a little bit in order to say, Jesus is allegorically using metaphors to communicate abstract truth in everyday kinds of principles that everybody would have understood how a vine works.
When He talks about pruning, they would have gotten it. It made sense to them. What I'm suggesting is, we're not the Father, but as the Father prunes, cuts away, and removes those people that are inhibiting growth of the true vine in Christ, the branches, so we too need to prune, cut away the areas of our life that are not helping us grow in Christ.
You got something you're hanging on to, you're just not ready to let go of? You got something that you know God has called you to do, but you're just not ready to step into it for fear of failure, maybe? Fear of not doing it right?
Jesus has never, ever been concerned with whether or not we do it right when we're doing our very best to be faithful to what He has commanded us to do.
Jesus' word, and therefore, Paul's words, and Peter's words, and James' words, the word of God is given to us with commands that we are to follow. They're not suggestions.
They're not, "Hey, if this makes sense to you, give it a try." I've read the Bible a lot. I've never seen that phrase in there if it's talking about one of God's commands.
So we need to approach 2025 like a vinedresser, so that when the Father, the true vinedresser, looks at us, He sees branches that are growing because the branches are cutting away the things that are hindering the growth of the rest of their life.
And that can happen through sins of commission, things you do, or sins of omission, things that you know you ought to do, but you're not doing.
So I want to ask you a couple of questions here. I don't think I finished reading the longest point that I've written in my seven years of being pastor at Oak Grove Church.
You're supposed to laugh right there.
We need to approach 2025 with a mindset as the Father, as a vinedresser, cutting back or cleaning up what's not bearing fruit in keeping with righteousness, and part B of that is pruning what is bearing godly fruit according to the Word, so that it might continue to grow, so that we might continue to thrive, so that as a body, we would continue to thrive.
So I want to close with a few questions.
What is one thing you can do this year to increase your enjoyment of God? Now, some of you, you really like to follow the commandments of God. Praise God. I've been saying this whole sermon. That's wonderful, and that's what God calls us to do.
However, as we fellowship with God, there is to be enjoyment in walking with Him, in fellowshipping with Him, in caring for one another, because it is a delight to walk in the ways of the Lord.
That's why Psalm 119, or maybe it's Psalm, well, I'm getting Psalm 19 or Psalm 119, 119:105, I want to say, but also might be Psalm 19:11. This is embarrassing because I'm talking out loud, thinking out loud.
"Your word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you." Why? Because I don't want to sin against you. It's a delight to walk with you, Lord. Your word is good. I love to think on your word.
I love to let your word move around in my mind and my heart and process your word. Why? Because I love you, and I want to know more about you. I want to understand you more faithfully.
I want to understand you better. I want to understand you better in my mind, but also in my heart. Don Whitney, who wrote a book on spiritual disciplines, or a couple of them, has said, "Our enjoyment of God comes primarily through the means of grace He's given us."
God's word, growing in God's word, prayer, fasting, fellowship with the body of Christ, and the list goes on. He's promised to bless us the most directly and consistently through means such as His word, prayer, and the church.
And so as we spend time in the word this year, friends, make it a point not just to read large portions of scripture. And that, you know, there's different ways that you can go about reading the Bible in a year.
But don't just make it your goal to get through larger portions of scripture. Pause every time you're in the word and say, "What is one verse or small passage principle in here that I can think on throughout the day?"
Say all day long, "Lord, would you work this over in my mind and my heart? Would you refine it in me? Would you give me a love for knowing you more by meditating on your word?"
The world will tell you that meditating is emptying yourself. And that's false and contrary to the Bible. The Bible says, "Fill yourself with me. Fill yourself with my word."
So when I say meditate, I'm talking about a biblical way of doing it. I'm talking about a biblical way of doing it. I'm talking about a biblical way of meditating by thinking richly and deeply on the things of God.
Second question to consider for the new year: What is a significant hindrance or avoidance to your spiritual growth? I've kind of talked about this already, so I'll say this quickly.
What are you doing that goes against God's description of what's best for you and for those you love? What do you need to cut out? What are you avoiding that you know would be helpful to you or to those you love? Why do you avoid it?
Maybe you need to deal with that first. And this is where I'm talking about the reality of trying to understand why we're doing what we're doing, but that's never an excuse to continue not doing it.
Well, I don't really know why I do this, so I'm just going to ignore it and keep doing it. Well, that's ridiculous. If I can say that as lovingly as possible, it doesn't make sense until you begin to understand what's the idol in your heart there.
What's the sin beneath the sin? So are we really supposed to spend time thinking through all these things? Well, yes, because if you're allowing that idol to keep you from obeying God's word and you know it, it's worth doing the work necessary.
In fact, I would say God commands us to do the work necessary to understand it so that you can walk in obedient faith or faith-filled obedience.
Third question: What is the most helpful new way that you could strengthen your church? It's easy to go, "Well, I'm already doing this, or I'm doing this, or I'm doing that." Great.
Are those areas where you need to continue serving? Or for some of you, is it just low-hanging fruit and I can kind of check off I'm serving the church family by doing this thing that doesn't take much effort? No real commitment, no real vulnerability.
Now, all of those things still need to be done. All of those ministries still need to happen. But some of you need to move up in ministry to a greater level of commitment or vulnerability or willingness to learn and challenge your mind and challenge your heart and come alongside of others.
Now, I don't necessarily know who needs to do what, but I believe if we as a body will go to the Lord and say, "Father, would you help us understand how I need to most faithfully fellowship with you and grow by serving my church family?"
Would you help me understand what that is? He's faithful to do that. He's faithful to do that.
If we're going to be wholehearted followers of Christ's church, it means cooperating with God through the work of the Holy Spirit and His Word in community with one another in order to help care for one another in the many tangible ways that really you're so good at as a church.
When there's a need, y'all step up to meet the need. When somebody's hurting, oh, you do a great job of coming alongside of people and meeting tangible needs.
Some of you might be intimidated by moving from helping people with the tangible, physical things to coming alongside and saying, "Well, how can I learn how to take God's Word and help people spiritually?"
But that's what God calls us to. And that's what we need to be committed to as a church family. It also means committing to open the Word with one another in biblical community in your standard everyday relationships.
One of the things that somebody recommended to Sherilyn and me before we were married was that we would approach a little bit of an older godly couple, someone that we were married to, and we would approach a little bit of respect.
And we saw fruit of their relationship with the Lord. And there were things about their marriage and their parenting that we admired. And so we approached a couple one time and we asked them, "Hey, would you guys be our marriage mentors?"
And they were a little bit taken aback by that. They're like, "What do you mean?" And we're like, "Well, we don't know. I think what we mean," that's kind of how the conversation went. I'm just being real with you, right?
I'm like, "You guys love Jesus. You've got a good marriage, not a perfect marriage. We know that, even though we don't know what the flaws are. But at the end of the day, we want to be tightly connected in friendship with another married couple that's a little further along than we are."
Because we don't know if tragedy is going to strike, and we know hard things are going to happen. But when tragedy strikes, if the Lord would will that, we need to already have the relationship in place.
Not just so you can help us, but so that you can help us in the future. So that we can help us in wisdom, know how to navigate certain situations in ways that are consistent with the Bible.
I want Sherilyn to have someone she can go to and say, "He's not listening," and would you talk to him? Or vice versa. She wants me to be able to have someone I can go to and say, "I don't really know how ladies work, and so can you help me think of how to navigate this trial that we're going through?"
Or struggle that we're having. And you might say, "Well, that's a terrible way of finding a mentor." And maybe it is. But the point is, we did it. We asked the question, awkward as it was when it was.
And Gavin and Sue Stobie are friends to this day. We watched their children grow up through our youth group, and they are grandparents now, faithfully fellowshipping with the Lord and godly grandparents.
And we're so thankful for their influence in our life. Who might you need to humble yourself and say, "Would you come alongside me? I don't have anything major going down right now. If I do, I think I want you by my side."
Heavenly Father, as we approach this upcoming year, there are a lot of things that we can be thinking about. A lot of goals we can be working to set for ourselves, many of them good goals.
But may the good goals that we're striving for not crowd out the great godly goals that you in your word would have for us. And Holy Father, you are the vine dresser. You know exactly what we need.
And you have given us the word of God. You have given us your Son, and you have given us the Holy Spirit to illuminate your word, to help us understand your word rightly.
May we remain in you, abide in you, cling to you, and enjoy growing in fellowship with you. May you breathe new life into our time reading the Bible, so that as we look at ourselves, we might look at you ten times more.
That as we see descriptions of you in the Bible and how you work in the lives of your people, that you might excite us with how faithful you are.
Passages that we once glazed over, might they come alive to us again. And may your word and may the body of Christ be at the center of how we strive to glorify you this year, to the praise of the glory of your grace.
In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.
on Jan 02, 2025
