Easter 5 John 15:1-8

I would make a terrible farmer. As I was reading on line about keeping orchards and fruit trees I discovered that it is tedious work. I like low maintenance gardening, put a seed in the ground and maybe water it a few times and hope for the best. Vine dressing is as much art as it science; training the branches to grow in the direction you want them to grow, making certain there is not an overgrowth that stifles maturity, removing the dead and diseased branches. There is work involved in maintaining an orchard or a vineyard. Constant continuous work that requires and demands a dutiful agrarian to get the utmost in production, but also beauty out of his plantings. Dear friends, this is our Lord. One who tends and shapes but who also prunes us the branches so that we grow into full maturity and so that we produce good fruit. This is the devoted care our Lord gives to his vineyard. But our Lord who tends and cultivates and nurtures also prunes. Those branches who are dead and diseased are not left on the vine to corrupt the whole vine. They are cut off then gathered up and thrown into the fire to be burned. There is judgment in our text. The question is, are you an unfruitful brach? To answer that question we must understand this: what does it mean to be unfruitful? St Peters second epistle offers us some insight. In chapter one we read this: For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8 ESV) To remain in Jesus begins with faith, faith that hears the Word of God, that receives the good news of God’s salvation – Jesus dead on the cross and raised to new life to the glory of the Father – faith hears that Word and says Amen! That Word is for me! And so we are members of Jesus the true vine. So that is faith. But faith gives way to love. And love includes that list that we heard from Peter. Virtue, knowledge, self control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love. Peter says that these things keep you from being unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So to be fruitful is to be virtuous, knowledgeable, self controlled, steadfast, godly, filled with brotherly affection, and love. If we truly desire to please our Lord we are wise to meditate on these qualities and characteristics. And so you might ask yourself, am I virtuous? By virtuous our text intends to say that we are moral in our lives but also in our thoughts, not tolerating sin-filled thoughts. Zeroing in on honesty and purity in all that we think, say, and do. Putting away from ourselves all the ways of the world. Are you virtuous? Are you knowledgeable? Of course we don’t mean knowledge of general truth; we mean knowledge regarding the truths of scripture. Have you devoted yourself to understanding the Word of God and have you studied it and meditated upon it? Have your turned it over and over in your mind to glean from it every truth that it has to offer? Are you knowledgable? Are you steadfast? Once you have latched on to that truth do you hold on to it at all costs? Do you stand firm in the face of temptations to sin or temptations to dilute God’s Word with man-made conventions? Are you one who will stand firm even when you are challenged to let them go? Are you steadfast? Are you godly? Do you meditate on God’s Word day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment so that God’s Spirit permeates your life, your heart, your mind and so that the Words you speak are words of mercy and grace and love the way God speaks with you? Or are your words harsh and judgmental or crass or rude? Are you godly? Is your godliness matched to brotherly love and affection? Do you reach out to others with the same love that you have received? Are you eager to overlook the faults of others, eager to help and eager to serve? Or are you unkind? Are you steadfast, not in God’s Word but in your own will to power? Do you display brotherly love and affection? If you meditate on these things, if you pray that the Spirit open your heart to understand what these things entail, you will know that you are not. You will pray and you will repent. You will beg the Lord for his forgiveness and you will ask that he not hold your sins against you. Why? Because that is what a Christian does. Because that is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The alternative is to be too busy. The alternative is to be too offended. The alternative is to be too self righteous. The alternative is to be a withered branch. Jesus tells us that those who remain in him, that is to say, those who receive his Words with gladness, who take them to heart and pray for the Spirit’s active instruction for them and in them, those who pray with David, “Lord search me and know me, see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23) those who pray that prayer will be rewarded with the thing they seek. The Lord will give his Spirit abundantly (Luke 11:13) and you will be like a branch that is grafted in to the vine. The refreshing and rejuvenate Spirit of God will flow to you so that you will bear fruit. That is the image of the vine, is it not? A branch that is grafted to the vine will be lush and green, fed with living water (John 7:39) that carries nourishment for each branch to be fruitful. So that a harvest can be found growing on its branches. But the sick and diseased branches, the dead branches who care nothing for the water of life flowing from the vine, they are snipped off, they fall to the ground, they shrivel up and die. They will be gathered up and thrown away, burned in the fire. Jesus here tells us of God’s judgment against the unrighteous and their destruction in hell. So what is the Christian to do? Remain in Christ. How do you do that? Receive His Word. Jesus gives to you his word. Receive it. Be nourished by it. Our Bible class is studying Deuteronomy. Last week we examined chapter 6. We read a passage that the Hebrews refer to as the great Shema; the great “Listen”. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 ESV) We are to keep the scriptures close by. Keep them always with us and always beside us and always on our hearts and minds and on our lips. We are often in danger of treating our Bibles like an encyclopedia. We don’t use encyclopedias much any more. These days we have the internet at our finger tips, but it used to be that the encyclopedia was the place you would check when you had a question. A big bunch of information that was otherwise obtuse and unnecessary, but it could answer the occasional tough question. Sometimes that is the way we treat the Bible. Information, handy as an occasional reference. The Word of God is not information. Those words are truth and they are life. Jesus tells us that it is by the Word that we are grafted in to the vine. And it is by the Word that we fed and nourished. It is also by the Word that we are pruned. To be pruned is to have the dead leaves cleaned off. The leaves that hinder growth and that get in the way of the fruitfulness of the branch. To abide in the word is to be clean. It is to have those dead leaves cleared away so that the only thing that remains is good and green and growing. Jesus cleans you. He takes away your sins. He takes away your poor thoughts, your dead works, your selfish ideals. And he replaces them with those things that are fruitful, that result in virtue and knowledge and self control and brotherly love and affection. This is what God does for you. On our own we are branches destined for destruction. But God has picked us up and grafted us into Jesus the true vine. And by that vine we receive life and faith and we produce fruit and a harvest that is useful to our Lord and Master. He prunes us. He makes us grow. He cleanses us so that we are useful to him. May the Lord find you fruitful and growing and alive as you remain in Christ and as He remains in you. Amen.