Discipleship: Be Fruitful (John 15.1-8, 16-17)

Introduction

Here’s a little teaser for you; this is a true story. A young man called Andrew Gibson worked in office admin at the London department store, Selfridges. One day, when the proprietor tycoon Mr. Selfridge himself was there, the phone rings, so Andrew answers. 

The caller asks to speak to Mr. Selfridge. Andrew with his hand over the mouthpiece says “It’s for you sir.” But Selfridge doesn’t want to talk on the phone so he waves his hand and says, “Tell him I’m out.”

But the thing is, Andrew is a Christian. So truth is important to him. And he wants to honour Jesus Christ at work. But this is the big cheese himself. What if he fires him on the spot for insubordination? And look, it’s just a small and trivial lie really. After all, he would only be obeying orders. 

What do you think you would do? 

”Tell him I’m out” says Mr. Selfridge. Andrew takes a deep breath, holds the covered receiver towards the boss and says, “You tell him you’re out!” So Mr. Selfridge takes the call, but he is furious with this junior nobody talking to him like that. 

When the call is over, Mr. Selfridge lets rip. But Andrew says, “With respect sir, if I can lie for you, I can lie to you.” 

From that moment onwards, Selfridge had the highest regard for and trust in Andrew Gibson. 

That’s discipleship. I think what Andrew did is pretty well what Jesus would have done. And discipleship is learning to live like Jesus.

We’re continuing our series on discipleship today. Remember what we’ve already covered; God wants you to be teachable, and prayerful. 

He wants you to be faithful – never giving up, and welcoming – always focused on the needs of others, and prepared; ready to tell others about your faith. 

As someone once said, “Sometimes the best evangelism is simply telling someone you’re a Christian and then not being a complete jerk.” 

What Is Fruitfulness?

Today, I want to talk about fruitfulness. Basically, good news, God wants your life to be fruitful. 

That’s what we all want as well isn’t it? I mean how many of us here today would prefer our lives to be barren, sterile, unproductive and wasted? We all want our lives to count for something. 

Fruitfulness is one of the most important and repeated ideas in the Bible in describing what God wants for us.

I'll quickly run through just a few examples:

In the first pages of the Bible, God blesses the first couple and says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” 

In Matthew 3 it says, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.” Someone once said, “I’ve decided that I’m not going to focus on my past any more. So if I owe you any money, that’s too bad!” That’s not exactly producing fruit in keeping with repentance is it?  

In Matthew 7 Jesus says you can tell if people are spiritually sound or sick by the type of fruit in their lives. “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.” That’s why, in Mark 11, Jesus cursed a fig tree because there was no fruit on it. 

Galatians 5 shows what good fruit looks like in terms of character; “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”

In Matthew 13, Jesus says that those who hear the word of God and understand it give a harvest of up to a hundredfold what they started with. Always remember, a Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t.

Psalm 1 says the same thing really; if you think about God's word night and day, and take delight in its life-changing truth, you’re like a tree planted by streams of water yielding fruit in season. It says, “Whatever you do, whatever you do prospers.”

God wants you to be fruitful. He has appointed you for fruitfulness. In our short passage in John’s Gospel this morning there are no fewer than 8 references to bearing fruit. 

I wonder if this feels a bit overwhelming? People sometimes tell me that when they look at their life they basically feel unproductive, and of little use to God. “What have I got to show for it?” Do you ever feel that way?

William Cowper was a poet in the 18^thCentury. His mother died when he was just 6. He was bullied relentlessly at school as a young boy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was a sensitive and gloomy soul, prone to deep depression and even suicidal thoughts. 

He had to be sectioned at one particularly low point. In fact, he attempted to end his own life on three occasions but failed each time. He couldn’t even succeed at that! Question: in what possible sense could you accurately describe William Cowper’s life as fruitful? How would you encourage him?

He became good friends with John Newton, the converted slave trader, who wrote Amazing Grace, and who became a kind of father figure. He saw that Cowper was deeply despondent about what he saw as his pointless and fruitless life. 

But Newton had the perspective to say to him, “Look, I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what Ihope to be. But, thank God, I am not what I used to be.” 

Apples don’t grow in a day. You can only see fruit in your life when you look back over time and then you can see how far God has taken you. 

Cowper wrote some of the most anointed and best-loved hymns of his generation, many of which are still sung today. (Well, they are at 9 o’clock!) He was one of the pioneers of Romantic poetry. Wordsworth greatly admired him. Coleridge described him as "the best modern poet.” 

His life was impactful too in ways he would never guess; he was a leading campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade and in the end his camp won the day. 

Martin Luther King often quoted him in his civil rights movement. There’s even a window honouring him in Westminster Abbey. Much of this fruit William Cowper never lived to see – or was too unwell to appreciate it.

So fruitfulness doesn’t have to look like dazzling success, and basking in the adulation of adoring crowds. It doesn’t work like that.

I Am the True Vine

A few years ago, Kathie and I were in the Charente region of France where, mile after mile, there are sunlit vineyards growing grapes to make cognac. Such a beautiful sight... Vineyards are a foretaste of heaven.

The founding father of the USA Benjamin Franklin once said, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” Hmmmm.

Well, come with me to Jerusalem; it’s a spring evening and it’s the night of Jesus’ arrest; Jesus knows that this time tomorrow he will be dead and buried. 

In the very last verse of John 14, Jesus and his disciples leave the upper room and they all head for the Garden of Gethsemane under the full Passover moon. All but one in fact; the traitor Judas has already slipped away to betray him. 

The clock is ticking and the temperature is rising. In just an hour or two, Judas will hand Jesus over to a mob who will put him before a kangaroo court to be sentenced to death. Then, wretched and remorseful, Judas will go and hang himself. 

They head past the main temple gates which are adorned with a huge ornamental cluster of grapes overlaid with pure gold. 

Why? Because a vineyard was the emblem of the nation of Israel at that time. Some countries are symbolised by various impressive beasts; England by three lions, the USA by a bald eagle, Russia by a bear and France, unfathomably, by a cockerel. Why would a nation want to choose a chicken as a national symbol? Anyway…

Other countries are symbolised by some kind of flora; Canada by a maple leaf, New Zealand by a fern, Scotland by a thistle, Wales by a leek… and Israel by a vine. In fact, you can look this up online, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism to this day has a large cluster of grapes in its logo.

They head down into the Kidron Valley, which is full of vines. And then Jesus stops. 

And he says, “I am the true vine.” Not Israel which was planted in the land but proved a constant disappointment. “But I will give to God the fruit he’s looking for.” 

We aren’t that familiar with grapevines in this country; they grow much better in sunnier climates.

The trunk of a vine grows up out of the ground to about waist height where it ends in a kind of gnarl or knot from which arms (or branches) grow in either direction along a trellis, attaching themselves with curly shoots called tendrils. 

The trellis allows air to circulate and it exposes the fruit to the maximum amount of sunshine. If a vine is well tended, it will give large clusters of grapes. Jesus says that God his Father does the tending; he wants there to be fruitfulness in your life.

I picture Jesus running his hand up a vine trunk, along the running branch, and saying “This is what I am like. And my Father is like the one who trains the vine to run along the trellis. He cares for it. And he prunes it, cutting it back, so it will be even more fruitful. 

And you, well you’re like these branches here. Because, think about it, unless a branch is actually attached to the overall plant, it’ll get no sap running in from the roots and it will just wither and die.” 

He holds up a bunch. Here’s the point he makes: “If I were to lop this off, what are the chances these grapes will be healthy in a month’s time? No chance. They’ll be shrivelled and wrinkled and covered in fruit flies. 

It has to stay connected to the overall grapevine doesn’t it? Well, that’s what it’s like for you. On your own you will produce zero fruit. But if you stay joined to me, you will produce loads.”

The word Jesus uses here eight times is “remain.” Remain in me. Other versions translate it “abide in me.” 

We sing Abide with Meat funerals and before the FA Cup final but it’s got nothing to do with football and little to do with passing away; it’s about life, not death. 

This is the secret to abundance and fruitfulness and growth and blessing and plenty and overflow of holy joy and the Lord’s favour; it’s you living in Jesus and Jesus living in you.

Sometimes people feel nervous about v6. “If you do not remain in me,” says Jesus, “you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”

Could he be talking about me? Could I be taken out of Christ and eternally rejected for not being up the grade? In fact, remember the context; he’s talking about Judas. There is such a thing as a categorical rejection of Jesus, a settled and determined apostasy, from which there is no way back.

But if, unlike the traitor, you remain in Jesus and he in you, you will bear much fruit, he says.

Remaining in Jesus

How do you know that you are remaining or abiding in Jesus? What is the evidence for it? 

I hope you don’t worry endlessly as a disciple of Jesus about whether you’re OK or not. We’ll talk about assurance of salvation in two weeks’ time.

The first letter of John, at the back of your Bibles, lists four clear evidences that you are remaining in Jesus and I’ll close by pointing out what they are.

First of all, you know you are remaining in Jesus if you believe that he is the Son of God. 1 John 4.15; “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” 

If you think that Jesus was nothing more than a good moral teacher, who pushed his luck too far, died young in a tragic misunderstanding and whose dusty remains lie undiscovered somewhere in the Middle-East, I’m sorry to break the news to you, but you’re not yet remaining in Christ and there’s some way to go yet.

Jesus is alive. Or else everything we do in church is pointless.

Secondly, you know you are remaining in Jesus if you love others. 1 John 4.12; “If we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” 

There is a common assumption – but a mistaken one – that as long as I have a relationship with Jesus everything is OK. Some people say, “I love Jesus, but I don’t do church.” I don’t buy that. 

Grapes always and only grow in clusters. Think about that. 

Jesus said, “Love one another. Lay down your lives for each other.” He loved the church and gave his life for her. If we really love Jesus, what’s important to him will be important to us too.

Thirdly, you know you are remaining in Jesus if you’re keeping God’s commandments. 1 John 3.24 says, “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them.” 

In other words, I want to live in obedience to his will, as much as I understand it. I want to live right. And when I fail, it feels bad and I come back to God and say sorry.

And fourthly, you know you are remaining in Jesus if you have received the Holy Spirit. 1 John 4.13; “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit.”

In other words, faith has come to life at some point in your life; this means something to you. It makes you glad when someone becomes a Christian. You get excited about answers to prayer. Basically, the lights are on.

I got an email the other week from someone on our Messy Church team whose friend told her that she so desperately wanted her children and grandchildren to come to faith. And she had started praying about two months ago that her grown up sons would come to know Jesus.

Last month, one of her sons, who lives in Billingham, called her to say that his whole family; him, his wife and their two children had been invited by a very nice friend from All Saints’ to this thing called Messy Church – and so they went along – and they loved it, and he wanted to say a huge thank you to the Messy Church team. 

Now that’s brilliant isn’t it? Fruitfulness for that praying mother. Fruitfulness for that that brave friend who gave the invitation. Fruitfulness for the team at Messy Church. 

And we trust, in time, fruitfulness in a whole family coming to know and love Jesus as Saviour and Lord. If that little testimony lights a little spark in you when you hear that, that’s the Holy Spirit.

Ending

Do you want to commit your life afresh to Christ; to be filled with the Holy Spirit today?

Is this perhaps the first time you want to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God, to joyfully give your life to him? You will never be the same.

Is this a moment to ask God for greater fruitfulness in your life? To pray until breakthrough like that mum for her adult son? Or to step out in faith like that friend who invited a family to Messy Church? 

God wants you to be a fruitful disciple.

Let’s stand to pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 8 July 2018