Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Fighting Fruit Blight

by Dave Wilkinson

John 15: 1-11, Hebrews 6: 1-8

May 16, 1999

No true Californian will ever forget the Mediterranean fruit fly. You haven't forgotten, have you? It reappeared just a few years ago in Camarillo.

This pretty little fly with bright blue eyes was found first in the early ‘80s in the south bay area. The state government brought in thousands of "sterile" fruit flies in order to keep the fertile flies from mating with each other. But it turned out that not all of the imported flies were actually sterile. And soon we were up to our peach pits in blue eyed flies. Governor Jerry Brown refused to allow spraying at first but decided that it was safe -- after the federal government threatened to embargo California produce. Finally, many months and many millions later, the war of the flies came to an end.

In our text this morning, Jesus is also talking about fruit and what hurts it. He is talking about bearing fruit as being the intended result of our lives as his people. And He warns of the danger of not bearing fruit -- of having our fruit blighted.

Jesus and his disciples are walking across the Temple Mount on their way to the Kidron Valley and the Garden of Gesthamane. Jesus will be arrested there in just a few hours. As they pass by the Temple, Jesus may have pointed to the door of the temple, which was faced with a beautiful golden sculpture of a vine bearing grapes, and then said: "I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.

In contrast to the nation of Israel, described in the Old Testament as a dried-out vine or an unfruitful vine, Jesus says: "I am the true vine. I am the true source of life and strength for people."

Jesus says that He is the vine and that we, His disciples, are the branches. And in this image, He stresses three things.

He stresses first of all the intimacy of the relationship between Him and us. He stresses how we live in total dependence on Him. And above all, He stresses that we will demonstrate our relationship and make our discipleship effective by the fruit we bear.

Now, Jesus makes us three promises.

The first promise is that of effective, prevailing prayer. Verse 7. "If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you."

This is a tremendous promise -- a promise of great power. But note the conditions Jesus includes -- that our prayer will be effective and prevailing to the extent, first of all, that we abide in Him.

This means, among other things, that you can't expect to pray here this morning for a new red Porsche and have it sitting in your driveway when you get home. Sorry, but that's what it means. This is because a prayer that is reflective of abiding in Christ will reflect the priorities of Christ for us and for His world. I seriously doubt if those priorities include handing out Porsches when there are so many hungry people and lost people to reach and to love.

It is also necessary, Jesus tells us, that His word abide in us. This means that an effective prayer is one that conforms to what God has already revealed of Himself and His will through the Bible.

You see, Jesus is not saying that God is a cosmic vending machine into which we put in our prayers, say "Jesus sent me punch up our orders, and get what we want. Because if we are abiding in Christ and His word is abiding in us, then we are only going to ask God to do those things that are good for us and for the world --things that God already desires to do -- things that will happen not when He gets in line with our purpose but when we get in line with His purpose.

What Jesus is promising us here is power -- power to fully and excitingly be His people -- and the abundant resources we need to produce the fruit of our discipleship.

The second promise of abiding is found in verse 8: "By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples."

We are so very aware of constantly being on the receiving end in our relationship with God but look at what Jesus says here. He says that we can give to the Father just as He gives to the Father. Back in chapter 13 verse 31, Jesus declared that the Father is glorified by Jesus' ministry. Now, here, He makes the same statement about our ministry -- that we, by our actions, can bring glory to God.

And then, in verse 9, Jesus gives the third promise of abiding: "Just as the Father has loved me, I have loved you."

Jesus promises us here that His love for us is of the same kind, the same quality, and the same intensity, as the love He receives from the Father. It is constant and, above all, it is personal.

In Christian faith, we do not attach ourselves to a great truth force, align ourselves to a system of ethics or look inside ourselves to discover and develop some hidden "divine principle. By faith we abide in Christ Jesus and we know and experience the love of a person for another person. Jesus tells us that He does not love us as the symbol of "lost humanity regained" or in any other abstract way. He says that He loves us as a person loves another person and even more than that as the Father loves the Son.

But now, along with this promise of constant, personal love comes a tension that flows all through this passage. Jesus commands: "Abide in my love." The implication is that it is possible to not abide in His love. And if we stop abiding, what happens? If we "backslide" into sin or if we even go so far as to rebel against His Lordship, what then? In the imagery of Verse 6: are we "cut off, thrown into the fire and burned."

In other words, how saved are we? Are we God's probationary employees -- watching our step for fear of getting canned? Or are we truly, as Romans 8 told us, God's sons and daughters through adoption -- joint heirs with Jesus Christ Himself'? Is it possible for a true believer to fall so far as to be actually removed from the family -- unadopted, unsealed by the Holy Spirit, unborn again? Is the motivation of our Christian walk the fear of Jesus Christ? Or is our motivation one of responding in gratitude to all that he has done for us? This is a hard question. But it is one that we must answer. It's not a question "out there". It's a question "in here. Because the answer we give goes to the heart of our joy and our security as Christ’s people.

In answering this question, we should not avoid the tension that is presented --that fruit is the proper demonstration of discipleship. Or as James wrote in his letter, "I will show you my faith by my works.

But we should also not make too much of these verses. They should not be taken as proof that true believers will nor even can fall so far as to be cut off.

Earl Palmer of the University Presbyterian Church of Seattle writes: "Jesus warns that every branch that does not stay related to the Vine will wither. This is also an obvious implication of the image. Jesus is not saying to the disciples that they, in fact, will become fruitless or that they will cease to abide. He is, instead, giving the kind of instruction that a rock climbing instructor on a perilous mountaineering expedition might give to his student climbers. He will point up the safety features that will be used. He will describe the rope, carabiners and pitons that will secure the climbers during each separate negotiation in the climb. He may say something like this: "we have a two thousand-pound test rope, and it will hold any of you in a fall as we belay you in a safe stop, but you should all realize that there is no other backup system. If this rope fails you in such a crisis, you will have made a much more speedy descent than anticipated. Now this instructor is not expecting his climbers to break the nylon rope. In fact, it is impossible. But he must impress upon them its importance to them and the plain fact that if it should fail in a fall though it won't, there is no other hope for the climber."

Jesus invites his disciples to decide how they stand with the vine. He warns them that if the branches were to break away from the vine, then there is no other vine that will give them life, just as there is no other back-up secret rope or a stairway for the mountaineer. Jesus does not imply or say that these disciples will break away, but it would not fit in with the realism and honesty of Jesus as a teacher were He not to make it clear to His disciples that the purpose of this vine is fruit. He tells them plainly that the branch must be related to the vine. There is no other source able to sustain life. But that is not bad news. It’s good news. Because if the mountaineer chooses to trust the rope, the rope has more than enough strength to stand by him or her.

As Jesus declared in John 10:27-28: "my sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."

"It is my view," Palmer writes, "that the logic in John 15 is the same logic employed in the book of Hebrews 6. That writer creates the same hypothetical argument: "suppose a Christian were dissatisfied with the redemption there is in Christ and were anxious to move on to perhaps some greater height or better source for life; the argument might run as follows 'Jesus was a good starting point, but now I must move on to greater spiritual heights.’" The writer to the Hebrews warns such a person that there is no other source for salvation and life but what we have in Christ. If we were to break the rope, we must remember that there is no other one. He has not taught us that the rope will break. Or that we can even saw through it. Instead he insists that there is simply no other rope.

I firmly believe in the eternal security of the believer. It is not presumptuous for you to say, "I’m saved and I know it." You should know it. I will be glad to discuss this question with any of you any place, any time because it is so important for the joy and freedom of your Christian life.

But at the same time, I must also point out again that this is no excuse for laziness. If you think "well I'm saved so I don't have to do anything about it or I can live any way I want," I encourage you to take a close look at your connection to the vine and to evaluate whether you have ever come to true saving faith. Because it's not the attitude a person with a genuine walk with Jesus Christ should have. If you think that way, there may be a connection loose. I’d be glad to talk with you about that as well and help you get hooked up right

Paul tells us in Ephesians that we are not saved by good works. But we are saved for good works. The purpose of the vine is to bear fruit. Let’s not forget it.

Now let us look at the aspect of Christian fruit bearing which most proves us to be Jesus' disciples...the fruit of Christian relationships. Our text for this morning is but one part of a narrative that began back in chapter 13. Again and again in this narrative Jesus has stressed that the proof of our discipleship -- the necessary fruit of our Christian life -- is love for each other. This is the same thing that John wrote in his first letter, chapter 3 verse 14, "he who does not love remains in death."

Jesus is saying that there is no way that we can make a commitment to Him without making a commitment to His people. Those who claim to have a commitment to Christ but have no commitment to His people will find that He has no use for their fruit .

Some say, I can love Jesus but not His church," Jesus says, "No you can't." Jesus said "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another."

Now this text can produce guilt, but that is not its purpose. For at the close of this passage Jesus says: "These things I have spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full." Jesus presents us with a tension and that tension ought to have the effect of pushing us to the lifestyle that will bring us joy. Joy is something that we will have in proportion to our obedience to the vine. Jesus wants our obedience to be complete because He wants our joy to be complete. Jesus does not call us to obedience for the purpose of plugging us in to some insipid religious pattern but so that we can have the joy of the artist of being a participant in the new creation.

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin said that "Joy is the surest sign of the presence of God." An old preacher named Walter Knight phrased it, "Joy is the flag over the castle of our hearts announcing that the king is in residence today."

Do you want more joy? Then I hope you paid attention to what Jesus said in these verses. I hope you are firmly attached to the vine. I hope that is showing up in your relationships. For Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full." That’s a promise. And that’s something we can all use.