Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're joining us. Whether you are a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll listen to sermons first before they visit. I want you to know that we would love to meet you at any point.
You can join us live in our services on Sunday, nine and 10:30 or our streaming service at 10:30. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, morning. If you're new here, I guess you should learn as soon as you can.
Anyways, Razorback basketball is far away is my number one hobby. I love it. It's so great. And anytime the Hogs do something great, we call it a red pants Sunday. This is way more than a red pants Sunday, right?
And this has won the SEC championship last week in the Sweet 16 for the fifth time in the last six years. Just that's unprecedent. It's not unprecedented, a long time. It's been thirty years since we've had this level of success. So great.
So it was so fun. And the game went till about midnight, and I'm rocking a solid four hours sleep. And so if somebody asks, is it a double point Sunday? I get double points because I'm coming here on four hours anyway. And anyways, somebody keep asking me.
He's like, man, if this is what you're doing right now, what if we're in the final four next week? And I'm like, I assure you, I have plans. Don't you worry about it. Don't you worry about it. We gotta get back to normal.
I'm not gonna make you look at that the whole time. Just a minute now. Right there. All right. On a more serious note, I want back up what Melanie said about Easter.
Encourage you guys to come to the 08:30 or the 11:30 service would be great. Encourage you to serve. And I know a lot of you are already serving and serving in Grove Kids, and I think I want to add something to that. Like this is all hands on deck. If you're not serving, we can find a place for you.
Go out to the Connect desk and sign up. And if you are, say, kind of a semi regular in Grove Kids, I just want to add this, like, you know, maybe I'll do once a month or every other week. Just to consider April 5, Easter, consider it March, right? Because we're going to need you the rest of April too. If all of our once a month are all on April, then we're going to struggle some a little bit later in the week.
So I just encourage you to kind of consider that kind of some above and beyond serving to really just make sure that Easter is a great experience for everybody, for all of us, for the people who are part of our church that we don't get to see very often, and for the people who are really just kind of, this is kind of the handful of times a year that they try to connect with God, somebody who's maybe brand new. And I just encourage you, man, this is one of the two times of year where you're going to find your neighbors, friends, and family just a little bit more interested in connecting and getting involved in church, and this is a great time. We celebrate that. Celebrate people who are coming to church for the first time or the first time in a long time. So encourage you to take a step outside your comfort zone reach out to people around you that could that you might could bring with you to worship on Easter Sunday.
One last thing, again, just kind of getting progressively more serious, probably most of you have heard of this already, but in case you have not, our longtime small group and discipleship pastor Mark, he and his wife Terri, late last Sunday night, early Monday morning, had a house fire that essentially is going to end up being a total loss for them, and the structure is still standing somewhat. And it has been a really just crazy chaotic week for them. And you guys have done an incredible job, both with meals, with clothes, just with all sorts of things, loving and supporting them well. I speak on behalf of them when I say that they feel very much loved and supported by you guys. And we were able to convince them to continue to go on a spring break trip they had already planned and paid for, and so they are getting some much needed just attempt to kind of escape from all of this, and so they're going to be in New Mexico for a few days, and then he's performing a wedding next weekend in Colorado.
So probably won't see him on Sunday until Easter, and just encourage you to keep them in your prayers, especially Jack and Darcy, they're twins, just kind of their hearts and their calming anxiety, and just that God would just be present with them. And people continue to ask, what can we do? What can we do? You guys have done a lot already to kind of help them in this initial transition, and we're going to get more and more information over the next couple of months, kind of what the future is going to look like for them, and what their really longer term needs are going to be. And so I just encourage you to just hang in there.
There will be a more significant rallying ask that we will need to do for them once we just kind of see where everything lands. So in the meantime, just encourage you to continue to pray for them, love them. If you have their number, feel free. That's what I've been telling people all week, feel free to text them, tell them you love them, but I would not expect I would not expect a reply. I mean, they're they're being they're overwhelmed, but I I know firsthand that hearing from everybody really means means a lot to them.
And it's interesting that, you know, when things like this happen, especially when they happen to somebody that we all kind of reckon is, quote, a good person, they're good people, they're good people, he works for a church, he's been a pastor, he's been a missionary, like, why would God let something like this happen? Now, there's a pastoral kind of there's a code. I can't use his story. I can't just make his make his story my illustration. That would be that would violate the code.
Once you you've got you've got to use your own story, right? But I do want to at least just kind of I know that a lot of people are already asking this question, so I think it's worth asking of just like, where is God in all of this? Why do these sorts of things happen? What should we expect? What should we expect life to be like?
And when something happens that is less than ideal, or maybe sometimes you feel this way where it's not just that something bad happens, your brain starts to get a little conspiratorial, and you feel like it just seems like all this stuff is always happening to me. And I think sometimes we struggle with this idea of how do we navigate life when life just really kind of punches you? And when is life, these kind of these sudden sharp turns, I mean, this is a feature? Is this kind of what life is? Does it mean something's wrong?
Does it mean something's wrong with God? Does it mean something's wrong with me? And really the bigger question is, if this is what life is, how can I thrive? And we find ourselves in John 15 working our way through the upper room discourse leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection, and what Jesus is doing here, he's preparing them. They've been following him for a few years, but it's always been very literal.
He's there, and they follow him, and he's telling them, I'm about to leave. And this was world changing for them because they believed that he was going to be a revolutionary leader, and they were going to be his lieutenants as we kind of set things right in the nation of Israel. And this is not what he was going to do. He's not what he's about to be what he was about. He was about to be arrested, and and according to Jesus' own words, he's about to be executed.
And so it's it's all blowing their minds, and he's trying to prepare them for what life is about to be like. And he models to them what it means to be a servant. He prepares them to kind of deal with their own betrayal, which is about to happen. And he's talking to them about the Holy Spirit, about how the power of the Spirit can come into them, assuring them that there's going to be a place for them on the other side where He's going in heaven, that He's there's going to be a place for them. So in this life and the next, you're going to be Okay.
He's prepping them for all of this. And when He's continuing this, in John chapter 15, in a fairly familiar passage, probably to many of us, in John chapter 15 starting in verse one. 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'll be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I've 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. It is both a simple but also very deep metaphor that Jesus is teaching through here, that essentially, you know, you don't have to be some expert gardener to understand, right, like a tree or a fruit vine of some sort, that it is the vine itself that is connected to the ground where all the nutrients and the waters come in, and the branches, their vitality in large part is determined by their connection to the vine. A branch that is disconnected from the vine, not a branch anymore, it's just a stick. And the healthier that connection to the vine, the more nutrients and water and life and vitality, and ultimately fruit will come from the branch.
And so what Jesus is saying is like, you guys are branches, and your fruitfulness, your strength, your power will come from how well you are connected to the vine, which is me. It's a very simple idea, but full of deep complexities that two thousand years later, just some of the things that Jesus says here are still a little bit mysterious and uncertain. And there's lots of debate about what is said here. But in all of the debate about some of the nuance of what Jesus is saying, I don't want us to lose the bigger picture. And the big picture is this, this big metaphor.
Your fruitfulness is determined by how well connected you are to the vine, who is Jesus. But I think it is important for us to explore. So what what really does this mean? What is Jesus saying? How well, that sounds great as a metaphor, but what does it look like practically in my life?
Well, the first thing that he says here, which I think is really interesting, and we need to make sure that we get, I'm the vine, my Father, God the father, he's the gardener. And in verse two, it says, he cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so it'll be more fruitful. So you essentially have two options. You're a branch that's not bearing fruit, and you get cut. Or you're a branch that is fruitful, and you get pruned, which means what?
You get cut, which that's not I mean, like, heads you win, tails I lose. I mean, it just kind of feels like that, right? It's like no matter what, there's going to be a saw involved, right? And we'll say it this way, life will be a struggle. Life will be a struggle no matter what.
There are going to be challenging times. And there are people that will talk like this sometimes, so they'll take this metaphor about being pruned and be like, oh man, this is a special time. I just know that God's working on me. He's pruning me. He's pruning me to make me better.
Like, man, you don't even if you're talking about it like this, you're not paying attention. There's a saw on which it gets to something that you in your life that you believe to be healthy, to be good. It is doing some good. There's something about you that from outside perspective, that's actually pretty good. What if we cut it off?
That's not great. Same way with refining. It's a popular metaphor in the Bible too. Oh, God's just refining me. Oh, that's sweet.
He said He's putting you in a fire until you lose all shape and sense of yourself, till you become a liquid glob till the worst parts of you rise up at the top that are now it's evident to everybody, then it gets sweeped off, and then you get remade. That's just beautiful, sweet, can't wait. I think sometimes we over spiritualize and mysticize some of these very painful processes. And so that when the pain comes, we get a little disoriented, when in fact, pain and going through it, I mean, it's something that Jesus is promising here. Now, want to tell you, I just want to take a little pause here because this verse often gets used, this passage, used to describe people that make you say that you can be in a relationship with God, you can be a branch, and then you can get cut off, which means you're no longer in a relationship with God.
And then it says you'll get burned, which that sounds like hell, and people will use this to describe, well, says that if you're sinful enough or not productive enough, that God will remove you from a relationship with Him and cast you aside. I do not believe that what He's talking about here, that we should be very careful about taking big theological points from metaphors like this, especially when have very clear teaching in Romans eight that says the opposite of that. I don't want to get too distracted here, but we are very, very firm here at The Grove that once you are in a relationship with Jesus, the love that Jesus has for you cannot be separated from that. If that is something you wish I was talking about, I encourage you to go to any podcast platform, find our podcasts, go back to July, and you will have forty five minutes of Abigail and I talking about that. You can you can go there.
In fact, I think if if we are going to try to make sense of what he's saying here, he's really talking to 11 guys who are who are very fruitful and will be even more so. So I think really he's making a reference here probably to Judas. Right? There's there he he we had this with this one guy who was like, he was sort of branchy, but now he's kind of over here, then there's you. And so to the degree that someone can have similarities with Judas, someone who is, I don't know, vine adjacent, but not really a branch.
That's what I think he's talking about here, because of the of the people that he's talking to. So because who he's talking to then, these are all branches that to varying degrees are demonstrating some sort of fruit. And I think we all need to kind of put ourselves into that category. Your fruit may not be great. It may come and go.
There may be seasons where it's not what you wish it were. But I think it was think of us like that. I I don't want us to kind of approach this passage with kind of this closeted fear. I don't wanna be a burnt up branch. But to come up from a place that I am someone who has a heart for God, that wants to follow Jesus, what is my life going to look like, and how can I thrive?
And I think you need to understand that there are going to be seasons in your life where God looks at the parts of you that are doing okay, and he's gonna he's gonna trim that back, and it's gonna be difficult. You're gonna go through difficult times not because you're not doing something, not because you're not being who God's called you to be, but because he believes you're capable of more. And we've been through a lot of seasons. My wife and I, we've been married for almost thirty two years. We have been in some sort of ministry of some kind in our family, church or college ministry, whatever, for all of those thirty two years.
And we have experienced a lot of really crazy times. I've been fired. You know, I've I, you know, I've I've I've lost jobs, you know, that, you know, every time we've ever moved from one town to another, we've never been able to sell the house. One time, famously here, we owned a house for nine and a half years after we moved here, in in another place entirely. And it seems like some of the worst things that have happened to us, whether it be some of the some of the bad things that happened to us when we were in seminary, which is preacher grad school or transitions from one town to another, it seems like some of the craziest things that have happened to us have happened to us when we were very clearly, in my mind, in our mind, being faithful to what God had called us to do.
I want you to do this. You need to go do this. This is important. Friendships that have been lost, pain that we've gone through, financial loss. It all seems to be in the context of times when we've been doing what God has called us to do.
And at the time, it is very easy to get into punishment mode. Conspiracy theory mode. There's something either wrong with God or there is something wrong with me. God either is not good and faithful and doesn't care, or I am there's something wrong with me. I am I am so bad, I am so problematic that something some something is desperately wrong with me.
And how do you switch from something's wrong with God to something's wrong with me to this is just a healthy part of life that hurts, And the only advice I really have is that it is time and perspective that do that. You just need a little bit of time. Because when you're going through it, it's really hard to think of the saw as anything other than a than a than a punishment, a torture. Something's wrong. But the reality, I could I could I could go on and on about any number of these stories, any of the things that have happened to me.
And, again, if you with with enough time, give me give me a year or two on the other side of it, And it is easy for me then on that side to say, yeah. I mean, there was some real immaturity there. In order to prepare me for what God had for me next, I had to go through that right now. That was the only way to be who God could call me to be, is is is to go through this. Sure.
That was okay. That was good. I'm glad you went to seminary. I'm glad you took that job at St. Louis.
I'm glad I'm glad you had that time in Central Arkansas. I'm glad you had that relationship. I'm glad and and good things came from that. There were some fruit, but watch what happens when I take it away. Watch what happens when you just kinda have to go through it for a little bit.
Watch what grows back instead. So if you're going through it right now, I don't know that I can convince you otherwise any that To think that it's fine, it hurts. But on the other side of it, I hope that you can gain the perspective, and you can even start it right now. I can see what God might be doing. And at least I'm not going to allow myself to get stuck in this trap.
Something's wrong with God, something's wrong with me. But this is just the process that God is going to use to help me get better. And so then he uses this verb. He uses it all the time. You know, so many times.
Like, when you have a same word in there six, seven, eight times, you need to take note of it. Right? He says, remain in me as I also remain in you. It must you must remain in the vine. You must remain in me.
Verse six, if you do not remain in me. Verse seven, if you remain in me and my words remain in you over and over again, remaining. He keeps, this is the word that he used, and it's a very clever word. And so we'll just kinda get the big picture point here, and then we'll kinda talk about kinda the why I think it's significant he uses this word. Is this what he's saying?
And this is the big picture of the metaphor, right? That staying connected to Jesus will make all the difference. Life's going be hard. It's going to it's going to have challenges. The saw is coming.
Some of you are experiencing right now. Some of you may be on the other side of it. Some of you may be just on the horizon, where the pruning process is about to start. And whether you stay connected to Jesus and how well you stay connected to Jesus is going to make all the difference in your heart and your perspective and what comes next. And he uses this word remain, which I think is really good.
Because it is not a particularly active word. It is not obey. It is not do. It is not follow. It is not run.
It's not conquer. It is not a particularly action oriented word, but it is also not a very passive word either. Hey, man, you just chill, and God will take care of it. You just stay right there. You just don't move.
And the grown ups will take care of it, and you'll be great. Remain has an activeness to it. It's an active thing, but remaining how do you thrive when you're remaining? Well, you need to understand, my job is to stay connected. Life comes from the vine.
Water comes from the vine. Nutrients come from the vine. Everything that matters that brings health and life comes from the vine. It does not come from the branch. The branch cannot do it.
The things that you need most in life, the vitality, the health, the growth, the fruit in your life, is not going to come by your activity. It is something that Jesus does. Life vitality comes from Him. And so now the connection is what matters most. Remain there.
But again, it's not passive. I mean, anytime you mix metaphors, you're going to get into trouble a little bit, right? But if I'm going to mix this metaphor up a little bit, I just think about going out into a river, not a raging river that's just going to knock you over. But one is like, hey, you go under the river. Hey, if you stay right here in this spot right here, you're going to have a great time.
There's a couple of things you can do. You can do nothing, and the river's going take you that way. You can work really, really hard to go this way, and you'll get exhausted. The river's gonna take you this way. Remaining takes an appropriate amount of effort.
I've got to work to stay here, because there's something pushing against me. Life is pushing against you. The chaoticness of life, the pace of life, the anxiety that comes from living in a high achievement society, the stuff that comes from living in a high divisive society, the chaos of the last year, five years, ten years, twenty years, pick your time frame as the world just kinda seems to be just can't get right. And everything about it is not is it is not pushing you towards connection. It is pushing you towards fear.
It is pushing you towards self reliance. And if I want to remain connected, there's an appropriate amount of effort that I need to put into it to make sure that I am battling all of the forces that are pushing me in other directions. Not believing that it is my activity that brings the health, but it is my activity that keeps me connected so that health and life can come from the vine. That's why we worship together. This is why we meet in small groups together.
This is why you read your this is why you need to read your Bible. This is why we pray because I want to do the work that I need to do to stay relationally and spiritually connected to Jesus. Now this would have been crazy for Jesus to say to them. For him to say that the kid that that the way that you're gonna be able to thrive is if you stay you have to remain in me. And like, can only imagine what they would have thought when he said this.
It's like, dude, you just said you were leaving. Like, you're like, you're leaving. How like, what were you supposed to and you said this whole complicated thing about you're going to go someplace and build a place, and you're going to come back and get us, and we know the way to where you're going and now we're supposed to remain in you when you're leaving? That doesn't make sense. It would have been mind blowing for them, especially any hyper literalists among them.
How can I remain in you when you're not here? And it was introducing to them and solidifying for us this idea of a deep, rich, personal, spiritual connection with who Jesus is that was beyond him being some sort of political leader for them. They could be his lieutenants. It was about connection to who he is, an elevation of him from leader, political leader to the Son of God. And now here two thousand years later, we're like, this is it for us.
Can I stay spiritually, emotionally, relationally connected to Jesus? And then he says this, a couple of wild sorts of things here, these kind of big absolutes. He says, if you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Verse seven, if you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. If you maintain this connection, if you remain there, then the health and life and vitality from that vine will be so overwhelming to you that you're going to bear a lot of fruit, and your prayer life's gonna be remade too.
You're gonna be praying for things with high expectations that God is going to answer you to to give you the things that you're asking for. Staying connected to Jesus will make all the difference, and you will promise. You will live a fruitful life. You're going to bear much fruit. God is going to answer your prayers.
And too often, we kind of look at these things as kind of magic formulas. Or somehow now we've got God boxed in. Well, as long as I'm a branch, he's got to do whatever I want. He's promised me all these different things. And it's it's it's not a it's not something we've tricked God tricked himself into being obliged to you.
This is all in the context of this really deep, rich, powerful metaphor of your connectedness to Jesus. I think sometimes we think of we think of Jesus like a cleanup service. Like, I've kind of done some bad things here, and now there's a mess. Hey, Jesus, can you come in here and help me fix this mess? That's what the prayer is.
That's what come in. I did it again. I've lived this life of independence, and I've gotten out of hand. I need you to come in and clean up the mess. That's not what he's talking about.
He's he's not he's not there to clean up the mess. Like if if you want to see god move powerfully in your life, then I want to spend every day trying to keep connected to him. Making this part of who I am, not someone that I need to call in case of emergency. In first service, I said speed dial and I think no one knows what that is anymore. So, maybe your SOS contact, maybe, I don't know.
He's not he's not just your SOS contact. He's not just someone you have on speed dial. He's not just your emergency contact. He is those things, but he's not just that. He is he is the one that connects you to everything that is meaningful in life.
And when I'm connected to him, I will bear much fruit. And and and what's happening is as as I'm getting more of Jesus in me, my prayers are going to be very different. The things I'm praying for, the what I consider to be fruitful is going to change. I'm letting him remake me. I'm not inviting him into this life I'm doing over here, and he's promised he's going to bless this.
He's told me that if I stay connected to him, he is going to bless me in ways that I can't even conceive of. And our relational connection is going to get so strong that I am asking for things that I can know that he is going to do. And my life will be full of fruit. I can live in here peacefully. I can have love and joy in my relationships.
I can see god using me to bring hope to people who are hopeless and bring light to dark places. When my family, with my friends, in my neighborhood, in my work because I am remaining connected to Jesus. We struggle instead of thrive because we lack the right perspective about what the challenges in life are supposed to be and and what they're supposed to accomplish in our life. And rather than focusing on being connected, we focus on being productive. And we think that somehow that life can be found anywhere else than with a vital connection.
We think that somehow life can be found by pursuing what I want with just a hand over here, just small connection. But all life comes from the vine. All fruitfulness, hope, life, peace, joy, meaning, making a difference. All of the things that we are striving for come from our connection to Jesus. Let me pray.
God, thank you. I thank you for your son. God, I thank you for this metaphor. God, I thank you what a great teacher he he was and is. And God, I pray that we would just let this all just kind of sink in.
We would just be a little bit more assured, a little more confident, a little more ready when the challenges come. That God, that we can anticipate what you're going to do even while we're going through the battle right now. And God, I pray that we would learn what it means to be connected and that we would work to stay connected. And, God, that we would let you do the work in us so that we can be fruitful, so that we can have life here now and forever. And as always, we are so thankful for your son, his death and resurrection which makes all this possible, and it's in his name we pray, amen.
Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to thegrovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you wanna dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate podcast. It's on the same feed, however you found this particular podcast.
So again, this is Charlie, the lead pastor at The Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.