John 15:4 Abide in Me Sermon
1. Process
One thing that I do every year is review the past year. You see, my wedding anniversary is January 5th. So it's a good time to evaluate how I'm doing as a husband and how my wife's doing and how we are doing as a family and where we're going and also a good time to see what our faith is doing. Basically we call it a yearly checkup we have a document that we add to every year we see how we've grown and changed what's annoying each other what we like about each other each year how our communication Styles have changed things like that just really get a good sense of how things are going and we try to come up with a theme verse for the year and along with that theme versus how does a family we are trying to grow a few years back the theme was peace and then the last couple years the theme was joy we wanted to have more joy in our lives and this year I'm really excited for the theme that we picked the theme is abiding. We picked a theme song to go with it so you can listen to that later. It's kind of fun. It's called Lemonade by Forest Frank.
So my goal this morning is to share with you the idea of abiding and invite you along with my family to consider making it your goal for the year to have a deeper relationship with God.
2. Hook
Have you ever asked God where are You? I need You! When we feel all alone as if God is not there and does not care about us that is a learning moment for us. When we look at our Bibles this morning I want you to realize that we are not talking about salvation. We are talking about relationship.
3. Text
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” (John 15:4)
4. Central question
Will this thing bring me closer to God or push me further away?
5. Textual background
This verse comes out of Jesus's conversation with the disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus is sitting at the table with his closest friends knowing that he is about to die knowing that one of his friends is just left to go betray him and he is teaching his disciples one final lesson one thing that he wants them to do and to remember before he's carted off to die. Jesus said to them
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35.
And then Jesus goes on to say, He tells the disciples that His time is at hand He Comforts them and they send a string of questions after him why this how that and Jesus Takes the time to answer their questions to say that he is sending the Holy Spirit after him if they will not be alone. If we get this imagery abiding in the example of Jesus that Jesus is in the father and the father is in Jesus is this mutual coupling like a hug.
He says I am the vine you are the branches so we're making an analogy here we see three aspects.
Jesus is the Vine. You are the branch, and God the Father is the vine dresser. The vine feeds the branches, gives it life purpose and fruit to grow. The vine dresser cuts off any branch that's not producing fruit and throws it away because it's wasting the energy of the vine so that's the analogy that Jesus is using here.
Point 1 - what it says (Abide in Me)
How do I abide in Christ? _________
The first thing it says is abide in me. Not second but first. The first thing to happen is that we must abide in Christ. We must be the one to reach out to give a hug. The one that goes to God, the one that wants to be in his house. And this is where we are so often tripped up we find ourselves saying God why aren't you with me why am I all alone I don't feel your presence yet it is us who must seek out God's presence he is always there with us we must acquire our lives and let him in.
God is always there for you. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.” Revelations 3:20. But we must realize His presence to feel His presence.
1. Emotion
My family just got here to this church. We drove across the country in about a week where I was listening to books on the drive and we're talking very busy well we got here Tuesday evening Wednesday night I was at church with my family to go to Awanas and bible study and so on and Thursday we went to our Homeschool Group all morning till 1:00 and then after that went and did some work and then Thursday night I went to a Bible study for a few hours and then Friday did nothing. Then Saturday got up and it came to the church and I prayed for a couple hours and we went to the store we went shopping I got things we needed we got we got cold weather shoes for the kids and for Casa we some warmer clothes we food we were out and about all day Sunday morning we woke up the heater wasn't working and it was about 50°. so we rushed around and got ready to go as fast as we can left for church before 8:00. At church we ran around crazy and spoke the first sermon here and we're here for a long time and there's the air conditioning was out we were we were gone for most of the day and when we were home we were all in the same room shivering together and we remember that heaters existed and got one of those and then Monday afternoon heater was fixed.
Abiding is an invitation (our posture)
You know I could probably go on and on but what I'm trying to say is life is busy, it's full, there are so many things that are very time consuming they have to be done right this second that just can't wait. But in the midst of the chaos we take a step back and we invite God into the situation into the moment and we abide in him. I was listening to the book The ruthless elimination of hurry by John Mark Comer. In that book he asked this wonderful question that I've been asking myself a lot lately. Will this thing bring me closer to God or push me further away?
Oftentimes when we're feeling anxious or stressed instead of turning to God we turn to TV to social media or we drink or we distract ourselves we might hurt others instead of turning to God. If you want to read a really good book about abiding in Christ I would suggest the book lead with Prayer by Ryan Skoog. But Time After Time in that book he mentions different pastors and missionaries that he's speaking to about prayer and they say that when life gets busy when they're too busy to pray they double their prayer time. Do you know Martin Luther, the guy who caused the Reformation, the reason that you're not Catholic. He was known to have said “I have so much to do that I shall pray the first 3 hours of my day.”
But the message that I'm trying to share with you today is not that there's another thing you need to do. Another thing you need to feel guilty about that's not the message the amount of time doesn't matter what matters is your heart inviting God into your day it's not another thing to do but the most important thing to do.
It's a lousy analogy but if you're going to take your kid to school you should probably take your kid with you if you're going to work you're probably going to bring your phone and if you like me if you're going to wake up in the morning there's going to be coffee because you're not the same person without it. That's sort of how it is here if you're going to do anything then why on Earth would you do it without God?
3. Text Abide slide
Sometimes being a Christian being a human our crazy world feels like an invitation to be busy for life to be full of different things. Let's take a look at that word abide. It's not one that I would regularly use and I bet most of us can't use it in a sentence. At least without sounding weird. So let's look at what some of the other translations of the word abide are. The two most common other translations for this word are remain or stay. You see Jesus is saying just stay there just stay there sit down sit down have a drink just relax you don't need to go anywhere you don't need to think anything just just stay just stay with me just for a little while just stay there feel my presence. Pause.
5. Theology in text
When we abide in Christ we feel better about our world
Sermon on the mount
6. Ethics in text
1. Central question
Will this thing bring me closer to God or push me further away?
Point 2 - theology (Christ abides in you)
What does Christ dwelling in me feel like? _________
1. Intellect
Okay so let's think about this for a moment the first part of the verse says abide in me then Jesus says “And I in you.” If you abide in Him, He will abide in you. It is a “if you stay with me I'll stay with you.” It feels like you are all alone if you wonder where God is in a given moment of your day you can ask yourself am I abiding in Christ in this moment? Because it's really that simple if you're not abiding in him then He is not abiding in you. So if you want to redeem your day to change your heart to remove the stresses from your life you first need to invite God in.
I want to be clear though, God never leaves us. He is always with us. Yet in some way I cannot quite explain, when we abide in Christ there is a special closer to God that comes about.
Abiding produces presence (God with us)
The way in which we do that can be different for each of us. There's a lot of things we can do, we can pray, we can read our Bible, we can sit quietly in his presence and empty our minds of all our worries and focus on him. That's called adoration. But whatever it is that you do when you stop and enter into his presence then He will let you in and then He will come into your life and when you go back to what you were doing before when you continue on with whatever it might be that God is there with you.
I'll tell you when it's late at night and there's still things I think I need to do that day that I need to write down or remember to do and borrowing tomorrow's problems I can't sleep. I find myself wanting to watch TV to drown out the voice in my head. But then I remember that I need to abide in him that he may abide in me and I I'll stop what I'm doing and I'll pray and I'll read my Bible even if it's a couple verses until I find my mind coming to rest and more often I will go on and watch some TV but then but my heart will be in the right place I won't be trying to escape myself but instead I'll be trying to be in the presence of God.
2. Community
You might consider who Jesus chose to abide with. What that looked like. If you look in your Bibles you'll find that Jesus often would leave the disciples and go off into the wilderness to pray you disappear in order to find time alone with God. He's perhaps the most important person who ever lived who had the most important mission that anyone could have but he didn't yield to our expectations of who he should be. Yeah above all else he prioritized his time alone with God. He is God. He went away to spend time alone with his Father.
3. Text among OT thought
Another good example of this in the Old Testament would be Moses God told him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt but he said to God if you're not going to go with us and then let us stay here. And we know God went with Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land and he guided them and a pillar of cloud by day and a column of Fire by night.
1. Central question
Will this thing bring me closer to God or push me further away?
Point 3 - ethics (Do this to make fruit)
What does Fruit look like in my life? _________
All right now let's look at the rest of our verse. And Jesus said “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” John 15:4
1. Tactile
So back when I was in college I worked as a gardener and one thing I did all the time was prune plants and since we were in the Pacific Northwest it was a lot of Rhododendrons. And rhododendrons they make these really big flower but and at the end of the season when the flowers die you for me you go up to the tree in you you take each one off one at a time until it's cleaned up and looks nice again and then before flowering season starts again the next year you go back with your pruners and you cut off all the growth it doesn't have buds you cut off the parts that don't have fruit that's growing away from the tree that that the parts that don't fit what you want and when you cut off a piece what happens is the energy that was going into that branch will go into the one next to it and the flowers will get even bigger. That's why Jesus is using this analogy of Vine and branches in the vine dresser. If you were growing in the wrong direction or if you're not growing at all if you're not producing fruit then you're cut off and thrown out that same energy that was put into you would go into another branch. If you are not abiding in Christ and Christ is not abiding in you then a good fine dresser will cut you off and move on. The only way for you to produce fruit is to first abide in Christ and then he will abide in you and the result of that will be fruit being produced. Now what does fruit look like in your life? The most important and obvious way to read this is that more people are coming to Faith because of you. It could be your children, it could be your friends, it could be your co-workers, but that's the most important and obvious way to read this. But it is also the things that God has called you to do. Whatever your job may be, however you spend your time, if you invite God into that thing and you are abiding in Him. The result will be that you are doing that thing unto God. In doing so, that thing is producing fruit for God's Kingdom. If you are on the worship team and you sing music at church here on Sunday and you're doing it by yourself that's no good but if you are abiding in Christ and he is abiding in you then God will be using your voice to reach people in the church and that is producing fruit if you're handing out flyers if you're serving in the church in any way it's the same thing.
Abiding results in fruit (God through us)
Conclusion
1. Central question again summary
CQ: Will this thing bring me closer to God or push me further away?
2. Story
Imagine Jesus is a first time guest at church or He came over to your house to say hi. Would God be comfortable in your house? And better yet, is God even invited? It is like like we talked about last week. When everything becomes about ourselves it doesn’t leave any space for God. When we abide in Him our reality comes into proper alignment with God’s glory and that is what brings about fruit.
