I Am the True Vine, John 15:1-17

Summary

Pastor Aaron dives into the purpose of the Christian life, emphasizing the need to produce fruit by abiding in Christ's love. He explores the concept of love and obedience, highlighting the importance of following God's commands. He concludes by discussing the transformation that comes from experiencing Christ's love and the joy that accompanies it.

Takeaways

• The purpose of the Christian life is to produce fruit by abiding in Christ's love.
• True fruit is produced when our actions are motivated by the love of Christ and aligned with God's commands.
• Love and obedience go hand in hand; true love is demonstrated through obedience to God's word.
• Experiencing Christ's love leads to transformation and complete joy.

Creators & Guests

Host

Aaron Shamp

Lead Pastor of Redeemer City Church

What is Redeemer City Church - Lafayette, LA?

Pastor Aaron Shamp preaches about the Gospel and facets of Christianity at Redeemer City Church. These podcasts are his sermons.

I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You were already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

Remain in me and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire and they are burned.

If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands, and remain in His love. I have told you these things, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

This is my command, love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I heard from my father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain so that whatever you ask the father in my name,

He will give you. This is what I command you, love one another. So this is the last sermon in our series that we started earlier this fall called Who is Jesus? In this series, we're looking at answering the question, who is Jesus? And we're doing that by looking at the Gospel of John. And we looked at seven stories about Jesus' miracles in the Gospel of John, and then we're looking at seven, what it ended up being six, statements about who Jesus is.

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from his own lips in the Gospel of John. So we looked at the seven signs and now the statements. And so the last statement that we're looking at today, the final one is Jesus' statement here in John 15, which is, I am the true vine, or he says, I am the vine. What we're doing in this last one is we're concluding the series by considering what is Jesus' desire for us? What is Jesus' desire for us as we now live a life in relationship with him?

This is an important question for us to ask, especially at Christmas time, as we celebrate the coming of Jesus, that we know who He is and what does it mean to have a relationship with Him? What does it mean to have a life with Jesus? In other words, what does He save us for? After we become a Christian, or after we start to follow Jesus in a new relationship, what is it for? What is that life supposed to be about after that? That is what we learn about here.

in this passage and in Jesus' statement that he is the true bond. So, we're looking at our purpose in Christ today. We'll be asking three questions. The first one is, what is our purpose? And then, how do we fulfill that purpose? And then lastly, what does that look like when we fulfill that purpose? So, what is the purpose? How do we fulfill it and what will it look like? So, we begin with talking about what is our purpose?

One of the things that I do whenever I prepare to teach on a passage here at our church or somewhere else, one of the things that I do in my preparation, often the first step, will be just to look at the passage and read it, and then read it again and read it again. Because over this repeated reading, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say, pick out, what are the words? Just very simply, you know, you don't have to go to seminary to be able to do this, guys. So here's a great tip.

just to say, what words are being repeated over and over again here? That's usually a really good way to know what a passage is about. So just simply ask, what words or phrases, it could be a question, or like I said, a phrase or a statement that's repeated over and over again in a passage. That's usually a really, really big way, a key to knowing, okay, what is this about? What is Jesus wanting us to grasp? What is John trying to say to us in retelling what Jesus had said to them?

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You can find it in repeating words. And in this passage, there are some, there's a couple of very obvious ones that just jump out at you. Obviously, Jesus repeats that he's the vine. But even more than that, because we're asking, what is the purpose for those who are connected to the vine? We see the words remain, or in other translations it says abide. You know, Jesus says he's the vine, we need to abide in him. Abide is a really popular word in translations in John 15. So remain or.

abide, and then also fruit. So, remain in fruit. What if you read this passage that we just read, if you go reread it later, you'll see it's in there over and over and over again. And so, I think this is what Jesus is trying to get across to us here. We see it down in verse 16. It talks about Jesus. He says, you did not choose me, I chose you. Isn't that incredible? Jesus says before, you know, if you're walking with Christ today, Jesus says to us here,

that if you're walking with him, if you know him, if you have experienced the grace and blessing of his love, long before it ever crossed your mind to follow Christ, to submit to your life to him, long before you desired Christ, he desired you. Whenever we were still dead in our sins, whenever we were completely without merit to experience his love, whenever we were completely unworthy,

of receiving his forgiveness and grace. Whenever we were running with full speed and direction after our own chosen way of life, whenever we were sinners at heart, sinners in mind, and only desiring sin, before we ever knew what it meant to love God, Jesus says, his love was set on you. And so if you ever question, well then,

You know, I'm walking in my life now and I still continue to struggle. I still continue to fall. I there's days where I know that my heart is not desiring him as much as it should. And so does his love waver for me? Similarly. If he. Set his love upon you before you ever considered obeying him, before you ever considered loving him, before you ever desired him, he desired you.

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then what do you think now would make him change?

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You see, if my salvation depended upon my choosing Christ, I would have lost it a long time ago. If you're being saved, if you're being able to look forward to a future in heaven, if your forgiveness of sin was dependent upon you choosing Christ, you desiring Christ, your efforts, your morality, your lifestyle, your choosing, once again, you would have lost it. We all would have.

But even on my worst days, I can rest in the security, I can rest in this assurance. My salvation is steadfast because it is grounded in Jesus' choosing love for me. It is grounded in his perfect love for me and not because of what I did. He says, he chose you. Why? What is it all about? Why does he choose?

If you go and you read in Romans chapter 8, Paul references this of how God foreknew and He choose those that He would save. And he lists all the things that are involved in. He says He did not just foreknow, but He ordained and He sent His Son to die so that He might justify, so that He might sanctify, so that He might glorify. You know, if in eternity past, like God had this plan to choose you, what is it for? It is for this. He says He chose us.

and appointed us for this reason, to go and produce fruit. What Jesus is talking about here is a transformed life. So whenever we ask the question, what are we saved for? So if salvation means that, if being saved means that my sins are forgiven by an act of God's grace, I didn't do anything to earn it. I didn't do anything to contribute to that forgiveness.

He gives it to me as a free gift because of his choosing love for me. While I was a sinner, he demonstrated his love for me. So if my salvation is rested and based upon that, well then, what is the point of my life now? If salvation was just so that your sins could be forgiven and you go to heaven one day, well then what's the point of all this stuff in between? If that's what it was all about, then whenever we become Christians and we're saved, why aren't we just immediately like, take it up to heaven, zapped up there?

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was because he has a purpose for you now. He saves you not just for that future, the theological term is glorification, right? Going to heaven. Not just for that, but there's a process and a purpose he has for you now. It's transformation. It is inner transformation of the heart of the character. It is change. Transformation in your life is the sign of life.

Jesus says that those who are connected to him, because he is the vine, the vine is the source of life. And so he says, as he being the vine, the source of life, branches that are connected to him will do what? They will bear fruit. Because those branches are connected to the source of life. The fruit that is born by the branches is the sign of life. It is the evidence that Christ dwells within. It is evidence that this person knows Christ.

And so our first point is this, we only produce fruit by abiding in Christ. This is our purpose, that we would produce fruit and it is done, Jesus tells us, only whenever our life is in Him and He dwells within us. What does that mean? It means to be united to Him. It means to follow Him. It means whenever our life is completely given over to Him, whenever we give our life over to Christ, whenever He becomes our life, whenever He becomes our Lord.

then what will happen, by virtue of us like a branch being grafted to the vine, we will start to produce fruit. What does that mean? It means good works in our life. It means signs and evidence of change. It means a transformed heart, a transformed character. It'll mean greater love, greater patience, all the other fruits of the spirit listed in Galatians. It'll mean doing works of mercy and of justice and of righteousness and so on. But this only happens

by abiding in Christ. Jesus makes that absolutely clear in John 15. He says that without him, or if we are separated from him, we cannot produce fruit. Now let's just think about this a little bit. You see, one of the things that makes Christianity unique is that Christianity does not offer a self-improvement plan. Many other religions will offer you a self-improvement plan. They'll say, you know, if there's things in your life that are bad or things that you wanna change, then here are the steps in order to how to do that.

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If you go to Barnes and Noble or Books a Million or any other bookstore today, you'll find large sections in those bookstores called self-help or self-improvement, books full of how to cure this problem and of how to cure that problem and the steps to go about doing all those things. Christianity does not do this. There's no self-improvement plan. There's no self-help plan in Christianity. There's no steps that you that you follow. It doesn't present steps.

or rules to change. However, at the same time, it says that the evidence in your life that you know Christ is that there will be tremendous change. How do we reconcile those things? There will be tremendous change, but it's not because of self-help, it's not because of steps to improvement that you take, but it's because Christianity offers us a person. No other world religion does this. No other self-help philosophy does this by offering

a person that you know, that you come into a relationship, and then by virtue of that relationship, you were transformed. Everyone else offers self-help, steps, paths of wisdom, different religious rites and ceremonies that we have to go through, but the gospel says, no, here is a person, it is Jesus Christ. Because self-improvement plans, self-help, religious ceremonies and rites and steps and so on,

different rules to follow do this. They can only change our behavior, but they don't change our heart. You know, you can get a person to follow all kinds of rules and change all kinds of behavior, but deep within the heart and at the level of that person's character, they remain completely the same. Because we all know that with the right amount of external force, we can all, all of us in here.

can't, with the right amount of external force, can produce mechanical compliance. Right? We do this all the time. We do it at work. We do it, you know, whenever I'm driving down a highway, going a little over the speed limit, and I see a cop car sitting on the sign, I'm forced into compliance. I slow down, right? With the right amount of external force, all of us will do that. You did this at school, you do this at your job, you do it with your family sometimes. We do it all over the place. Whenever there are the right forces that,

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we recognize, okay, it's worth following the rules here, then we can follow the rules. But meanwhile, our heart be completely rebellious, bitter against the rules, bucking up against having to follow them, cynical for having to follow the rules because it's just mechanical compliance. But what Jesus describes here is not, here is steps to transformation just by mechanical compliance, by self-help.

What he offers us instead is what he desires for us is a natural obedience that comes from inner transformation, that comes about by virtue of knowing Christ. We know, and we can kind of understand this just by drawing analogies, we know that key relationships in our life can often bring about character transformation.

You know, I think one of the most obvious ones would be marriage and would be parenthood. Just think about parenthood. Whenever that child, that first child comes into the life of a new family, it changes a man into a father. There's a change of identity there by that person being brought about into the world, into that family. You know, a woman becomes a mother. Mothers become grandmothers.

That person literally changes people's identities. And then through the years of relationship between parent and child, not only is the child's character formed, hopefully, right? Formed in Christ, Christian parents, right? But also, Christian parents who are following the Lord, you recognize that child is also a gift to you of God of sanctification. And so by virtue of your relationship with that child, you are also being changed. You are also being...

transform. This is what we mean whenever we, you know, new parents hear about 90 to 100 times in that period of pregnancy, oh, everything's about to change. Oh, everything's about to change, parents. You remember hearing that? Or if you're pregnant right now, you know you've heard that a bunch of times. And it's absolutely true. It's a cliche, but it's absolutely true. But I don't think people recognize just how deeply true it is. Because yeah, things like your schedule, maybe some of the...

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the cleanliness of your house, those kind of things are gonna change. The things that truly change everything are those factors of your identity has changed, right? Your character changes. You have all of these virtues that were hidden inside of you that you never knew were there, that you never knew you were possible. But then once that burden of responsibility is placed on you in that relationship, all of a sudden you recognize that you have these virtues, these strengths that you...

didn't even know were there or were possible. Right, that's what we mean. By analogy, this is the kind of transformation that we're talking about that comes from a relationship with Christ. That relationship transforms our identity, it transforms our lifestyle, it transforms the priorities of our responsibilities and of our values in life. And so you see, on the one hand, I don't want you to think, oh, well, that sounds great.

That sounds so much easier than just following a bunch of rules. Not so fast, because on the one hand, following rules would be a lot easier. You know, if Christianity just said, here's 10 easy steps clearly laid out for you that you have to do, that's it. Well, you know, following those 10 steps or following some kind of self-help plan is way easier than heart transformation. Have some of you guys ever looked taking time to reflect on your heart, you know?

to really reflect on the state of your heart and the dark corners and the things that you often try to ignore or distract yourself from, and then try to change those things that work on them, that is hard work. That is extraordinarily hard work. You know, on the other hand, steps will be so much easier because, well, following a step doesn't take any thinking. You just obey it. You just comply with it. But a relationship, it takes thinking. It takes...

discovering of a person. It takes many times in your Christian life growing in wisdom to discern what does Christ desire of me in this situation because there's no rule book to follow. We just, through growing in our knowledge of Him, growing in relationship with Him, we learn what does He desire of me in this situation and that and so on. So, don't think, oh, that sounds easier. Actually, it's far more difficult. It's simple. A relationship with Christ, but it's difficult.

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Now, how do we fulfill the purpose? Jesus is very clear about this as well. So he's clear, he is divine so that the source of life, that whenever we are connected to him, we produce fruit. But how do we produce fruit? Because here's the thing, many Christians live their life hearing what I've just said, but then continuing in the old way of producing fruit. Producing fruit by just mechanical compliance, producing fruit just by forcing the behavior out from oneself and not

from actually knowing Christ. So, how do we fulfill this purpose? Here's how we do it. We only produce fruit by abiding in Christ's love. That is the key here. That is what you need to grasp and understand. We only produce fruit by abiding in Christ's love. Once again, we ask the question, so how do we produce fruit? Does it just mean, okay, so I pray a prayer to know Christ, and now I just start trying harder to follow...

what things that the Bible says, doesn't mean I just start trying harder even if I don't feel like doing this act of mercy to a person while I still do it, if I feel like going to small group while I still do it. Is that what we mean by, now that I know Christ, I just do that? That's not what we're talking about here. You see, two people can look very, very similar on the outside in their actions, but have extraordinarily different motivations beneath the surface.

Two people within a church can both be serving, can be producing different types of good work, can be living upright lives, but one person can be doing so motivated by the love of Christ, while the other person does so motivated by an external force. There's a lot of different ones we can list, but let me just list the two most frequent and powerful ones.

Very often, if we're not motivated by the love of Christ to produce fruit, to do good works, we are being motivated by either fear, there's some kind of fear operating in our heart, whether that be fear of, well, I don't wanna lose God's love. Or I'm afraid of what my family will think of me. I'm afraid of what will happen if I don't obey, comply, if I don't live a righteous life, right? Fear can drive you.

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to live a very good-looking life. Fear, the second one is pride. Pride can also lead you to live an extraordinarily good-looking life, an extraordinarily upright-looking life, a life that will get you all kinds of great, lauding and praise within the walls of a church. By pride, you can be motivated to clean yourself up.

make yourself look great, to follow the rules, to serve, to say the right words and so on so that you will get approval from people around you. So you will be looked upon well, so you will be looked upon highly. You're climbing the social ladder within the church, within your work, within your social clubs, whatever else it might be. But is this the kind of fruit that Christ is telling us He desires for us to produce? Fruit that is...

that is made by just fear of what will happen to us if we don't produce the fruit, or fruit that is made by pride operating beneath the surface, trying to just increase our own glory, build up our own reputation. No, this is not. This is not the kind of fruit that Christ is talking about. But you see how on the outside it can look very similar? This is why we need to consider it. It's not the kind of fruit that Christ is talking about because on the one hand,

And a life that is built motivated by fear, by pride, or by, there's other ones too, I think those are just two big ones. A life that is built on those things, the good works, the reputation, the appearance of uprightness and so on, is just behavior modification. Behavior modification without inward transformation. Once again, just external compliance without the true change of heart.

That kind of behavior modification, that kind of just mechanical compliance will be short-lived and it will be inauthentic. Our acts of service and righteousness, if they're motivated by fear and pride, what are they ultimately motivated by? Is your act of service motivated by concern for the one or those that you're serving or is it, if it's fear and pride, it is motivated by the self? You see how even on the outside, actions that are not motivated by the love of Christ...

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On the outside, they might look incredibly selfless. They might look incredibly generous. They might look incredibly loving, but if they are not motivated by the love of Christ but something else, like fear, pride, they're motivated by love of the self. It's gonna be short-lived. Eventually, the person who is living in obedience based on fear or pride is going to, they're gonna get burned out or bitter or frustrated and give up, and the truth will be revealed. Or it'll be inauthentic.

It won't be real. It won't be true fruit. Living this kind of way is like the difference between a tree that is living and producing fruits, right? An apple tree that is, that has good deep roots in the ground and that is alive will produce apples, right? But a dead tree, a dead apple tree doesn't produce any apples, does it? Now, on the one hand, you might go and buy a big bushel or two.

of apples from the store and go to that dead tree and nail them to the tree. And then now, on the outside at least, this dead tree will be filled with all this fruit, whether it be apples or oranges, whatever else you wanna nail up there. And you look at the two on the outside and you say, well, there's a tree that has fruit all over it, there's a tree that has fruit all over it. They look the same, I suppose, you see, but one is disconnected from life. One of them is actually dead.

And it just appears to be a life because of this external mechanism. Once again, mechanical obedience without experiencing the love of Christ is like a flower cut from its source of life. Whether you buy flowers at the store to give to someone, maybe an anniversary or so on, you give them and you have the little food and you put it in water with the food and they look beautiful for a while. Right. What happens after a few weeks? They start to turn brown. They start to.

They start to wilt and they start to die. That appearance of life only lasts for so long. It's inauthentic. It's a mirage. For those of you guys who have real Christmas trees in your house right now, a real Christmas tree that has the smell and the ornaments all over it, the lights, I'm sure that it looks beautiful. But what's gonna happen in about five weeks? It's gonna start to smell. It's not going to look as beautiful.

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right? Because it is disconnected from its source of life. Friends, if you want to bear fruit for Jesus Christ, then you must do so motivated by His love. Like I said, even within the church, it is so possible for two people sitting next to each other in the same congregation here, the same sermon, to have two outwardly looking, very similar lives, but beneath the surface, one of those Christians is not doing so by the gospel, but doing so based upon fear.

while the other Christian is doing so based upon the love of Christ. I love something that Tim Keller said. He said that there are many Christians out there who are living inferring the love of Christ. What he meant by that is they look at their life and they say, well, because I go to church and because I type and because I don't have any obvious gross sins in my life and because...

I help serve every now and then. I look at all these things I'm doing in my life, and I say, well, God must love me. I'm inferring that because of the good works I'm doing, God loves me. And so I continue to do good works. There are a lot of Christians who are inferring the love of God, but what we ought to desire is not to be Christians that are inferring the love of God, but are experiencing the love of God. And by virtue of experiencing His love, we are moved to serve.

If we experience the love of God, then as we'll look here in a moment, it's going to, it will naturally drive us to be less centered on the self and more centered on the needs of others, willing, ready, eager and joyful to serve others. What if we give, what if we tithe? It won't be done out of resentful compliance, right? But it will be done joyfully. Whenever we are there for one another, we will be happy to do so.

Because God's love is selfless, as ultimately proven on the cross. The greatest demonstration of God's love for us was his giving up his own son. Jesus's greatest act and demonstration of his love for us was his giving up his own life. Is there anything greater that you can give than your life? So Jesus's greatest act of love for us was his greatest act of selflessness.

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Therefore, those who are filled with God's love will be motivated to serve, to do good works, and so on, selflessly, not because we desire to build up our own glory. Now, before I move on, I just want to say, well, you know, as you move on this week and as you go on, I don't want you to start being overly introspective of your life.

you do any good work to stop yourself and say, oh, hold on, am I doing this because of pride or am I doing this because of Jesus' love? And, oh, I don't know what to do. And, you know, often you kind of get stuck. I don't want you to leave here and start feeling, you know, even more overwhelmed or even more burdened because you're trying so hard to not be legalistic. You know, that can just kind of turn into its own type of legalism. So as an application before I move on from this point, here's a piece of advice I don't want to give you, okay?

obey, then reflect. If you have an opportunity to do some good, if you feel motivated to do a good work, don't stop yourself and fight all that inward introspection in that moment. Don't be held back and miss that opportunity to do some good that God might be placing before you, that He might be calling you. Don't miss that opportunity because you're being overly introspective. Instead,

Simply obey. Do it. Be quick to obey and then reflect later. Okay? There'll be time for reflection afterwards. To look at your heart, to look at your actions in that given moment, in that situation, and say, what motivated me to act the way that I did in that time? Go over in a prayer, pray to God and talk to him about whenever you were serving in church, whenever you helped a person in need, whenever you gave generously, and ask, Lord, what was motivating me?

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Well, you know what? You still did the good thing. That's good. And then through the act of doing it and then reflecting on it with God, you discovered, oh, there's some pride operating there now. And now by the work of the Holy Spirit, we're going to work on that together. We're more aware of it. That's a double good. So don't be afraid. Don't hold yourself back. Be quick to obey and then reflect after. All right. What does this look like?

because this all might sound really nice about bearing fruit and so on, but I wanted to be clear before we finish today that Jesus is not giving us meaningless platitudes, okay, because it'd be real easy to say, well, you know, just you got to love, like all you need is love, right? Like, what does that mean in practice? What does that mean in reality? No one can define it. It's just a meaningless platitude, and we can do the same thing with here whenever Jesus says,

love one another, oh love one another, that sounds great, or we got to bear fruit, okay that sounds really good and nice and all, but what does it mean practically to experience his love, to bear fruit, and to abide in him? What does it mean? What does it look like to just move beyond the platitudes? And here's the last point and then we're going to close. We only produce fruit by

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a concrete example of what it means, or what it's going to look like whenever we remain in Him, we experience His love, and then His love drives us to bear fruit. He says that's gonna be obeying His commands. In verse 10, He says, "'If you keep My commands, you will remain in My love, "'just as I've kept My Father's commands "'and remain in His love.'" In verse 12, He says, "'This is My command, love one another "'as I have loved you.'" Right, that sounds fantastic.

What does it mean to love one another as Jesus has loved us? He says, no one has greater love than this to lay down his life for his friends. In verse 14, you are my friends if you do what I command you. So when we ask the question, OK, so how do we bear good works and good fruit in our life? If Jesus's love is in me, what is it going to look like to love others? What is going to look like? It is going to be visible. It is going to be distinguishable. We will be able to discern between that is a godly expression of love, and that is not.

With this question, does it fulfill his commands? Does it fulfill his commands? Does it fulfill his word? Does it follow his word? Does it follow what Jesus taught us? Does it fulfill and line up with what scripture from Genesis to Revelation says? There are concrete steps here. Therefore, we cannot love one another in a way that goes against what God's word says. You see, this is important for us, guys, because we live in a culture

that love, let me rephrase that, I can do better. We live in a culture that is eager and that is thrilled to laud love, right? And loving one another, and what is the loving thing to do? And to tell Christians, in fact, that many of the ways that we try to live in the beliefs that we hold are in fact not loving. That if we do not...

follow and if we do not obey and prescribe what is our culture's definition of love, then we're in fact hateful. For example, this can apply to many different things. This can apply to some of the most obvious examples such as the LGBTQ issues in our culture. Whether it be, you know, if we are, if Christians are supposed to be loving, then the loving thing to do will be to affirm, you know, homosexual marriage or to affirm.

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one's gender identity, whether or not that matches up with the gender that God gave them, and that if we go against what that person says or what these two people would like to do with their life, then we're being hateful. But what we must recognize and respond to these charges is that, no, true love and the love of Christ within us drives us to obey God's Word. We recognize that to love someone, quote unquote,

in a manner that goes against the word of God is to not be loving to them at all. Can I steal from a person and call that loving? No, because God's word says, you shall not steal, right? And similarly, there is no other way that I can truly love someone in a manner that goes against and breaks God's law. Consider this, Christ perfectly loves us by obeying the Father's commandments.

We're raised to think in our day and time, we're raised to think that law and love or commands and love cannot go together. But just recognize what Jesus said in this passage. He said to us, to love one another as He has loved us. In the verse 10, He says, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in His love.

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who gives the greatest, most pure, most perfect love of all, we can say, right? Jesus has never, ever loved you in a way that contradicted his father's commandments. In fact, his love for you that you have experienced is the perfect expression of God's law.

Do you believe that? If you believe that, will you obey God? Or are there areas of your life, are there ways that you are starting to fall in with what our culture says versus what God's Word says?

You see, but how is it possible for Jesus to love us that way whenever we do not deserve to be loved that way? How is it possible for us to be connected to the vine of Christ at all whenever we deserve to be thrown into the fire? Jesus says, every branch that does not bear fruit, the father who is the gardener cuts off, and it is thrown into a fire. It is eternally separated. There is punishment. How is it that we are promised that we can abide in Christ and experience all these things?

that cuts off those branches is the knife that Jesus Christ went under. The gardener's knife that cuts the branches and that prunes the branches is the knife the knife that Jesus went under whenever he went on the cross and he took that cut, that eternal separation from the Father that you and I deserve. He was separated from God. He experienced the wrath of the Lord. He experienced the fire that we deserve to experience, the punishment for our sin. So that because of him experiencing that,

and taking it upon himself, he absorbs what was supposed to be Aaron's punishment. He absorbs Aaron's punishment in his own death, and then is forever gone. He pays my debt, he absorbs my punishment, and he lays it down in his grave so that when he is resurrected, a new life is a new life that is also from mine. He is my substitute in his death, dying the death I deserved, and he is my substitute in his life.

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giving me the kind of life that he lives now. And the same thing is true for you. If you recognize that you do not have a life that is bearing fruit, if you recognize perhaps that you have been just trying to nail apples to the dead tree of your heart, you recognize that there is, in fact, that you have been cut off from the life of Christ. Maybe you're recognizing that for the first time today, or maybe you have been trying to fake it on your own for a long time. You're recognizing that today. And you.

Question and you ask yourself, how in the world can I be accepted? How in the world can I be forgiven? How in the world can I have life with Christ? It is because Christ went under the knife for you. Do you remember he said, he said he chose you. And I said that included a lot of things. Do you know what else his choosing included? It included his death for you. By virtue of Jesus setting his love upon you.

far before you ever set your love upon him, by virtue of him desiring you in relationship with himself, that also meant him embracing the cross. It meant him willingly bow beneath the knife that would cut him off so that you might be saved, so we might experience forgiveness in him. And so if you do this, you'll love others, you'll fearlessly pray. Jesus says twice in this passage

ask for whatever they desire in prayer. They're not afraid to bring anything to God. And then lastly, you have complete joy. Jesus said that he told us these things so that his joy might be in us and that it might make our joy complete. It is for our joy. It was his joy to set his love on you and give his life for you. And so how do you have your joy become complete? By now giving your life to him. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this gospel. We thank you that you set your love upon us, that you demonstrate your love for us while we are still sinners. And that because Jesus went under the knife, because he took my condemnation, he took the punishment that I should have received, they took the punishment that every person in here who believes on you, because he took their punishment as well, we now have this gift of grace.

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of being able to be grafted into the vine. So we might have true life at power within us. That makes us people who have this blessing of not just inferring your love, but experiencing your love. And then your love operating within our heart that brings about dramatic, complete transformation. Lord, if there's anyone here this morning who is not connected to the vine.

They recognize that their heart is dead, that their life is one that does not have the virtues and signs and evidences of life, but instead they have been trying to nail apples to a dead tree. They have been trying to live in their own good works. Lord, I ask that your Holy Spirit would meet them here this morning so they might have your love pour into their heart, breaking down the walls and any barriers that they set up between you and them. And they might know

that you gave your life for them so they might walk in new.

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Father, we thank you for these things and we ask that as we move forward in celebrating this Christmas season that we might not only get to have fun

and sweet times together.

great sentiments and nostalgia celebrated, but Lord that we might also have transformation that comes about from Christ's love that dwells within us. We pray this in the name of Jesus, amen. Let us stand together now as we respond to this gospel message and worship together.