1 I AM THE TRUE VINE JOHN 15:1-17 The international ...

away the pagan nations and transplanted us into your land.” (Psalm 80:8 NLT)
In fact, the grapevine became the official symbol of the nation of Israel just
shortly before it was overrun by the Roman Empire. Sadly, comparing Israel to a
vine usually had a negative connotation. The nation of Israel was like an
unproductive vineyard or an unfruitful grapevine branch that produced only sour
fruit. When Jesus mentions here the fact that non-bearing branches would be
cut off and then thrown out or burned up in a fire, the implication wasn’t lost to
His original audience. It shouldn’t be lost on you or me either.
How do you bear spiritual fruit for Jesus It demands your focused willingness to
be useful to Jesus. I’m told that a typical grapevine will produce two kinds of
branches: fruit-bearing branches and leaf-bearing. The gardener prunes away
all the leaf-bearing branches so that they won’t drain any strength away from the
branches which bear fruit. The gardener has to do this if he wants to see a good
crop of grapes develop on the vine. It’s difficult to determine everything Jesus
implies by this analogy. Is He suggesting that genuine believers can lose their
salvation Can you be cut off from God even though at one point you were truly
connected to Jesus Personally, in light of what Jesus said in other places about
the security of our relationship with Him, I think that’s pushing Jesus’ metaphor of
the vine and its branches further than He may have intended. Nevertheless,
there’s one very clear, indisputable implication. We all need to hear it and hear it
well: Uselessness invites disaster. That’s true of grapevine branches; it’s also
true of human beings. That’s true in the physical world of vines and branches;
it’s also true in the spiritual world of our connection to Jesus or lack of it.
Uselessness invites disaster. Uselessness invites disaster.
If that shocks you, disturbs you or makes you feel uncomfortable - well and good.
I don’t think Jesus’ intent here was to convey comfort. My friend, if you have
little or no desire to bear fruit for Jesus - to make your life count for Him – you’re
in serious trouble spiritually. God will cut you off! If you have a sort of lazy, take
it or leave it attitude towards the things of God, the people of God, the church of
God and serving God, you need to begin hearing the sound of some heavenly
clippers moving in your direction. God will cut you off! If life for you is just kind of
finding a way through it all – getting an education, earning a living, raising a
family, getting comfortable financially, planning your retirement, staying out of
trouble, trying to be a good person, turning up at church because it’s the right
thing to do, but avoiding anything that looks remotely like a spiritual risk, a
spiritual challenge or spiritual growth – you’re in bad shape. God will cut you off!
Heed the warning in Jesus’ words. God is patient with a lot about you and me,
but He has no patience for our inability and unwillingness to bear fruit. We’re told
here clearly that we were chosen in order to bear fruit for the Vine. That doesn’t
just happen. It demands your focused willingness. Every branch that doesn’t
produce gets cut off. The branch office – the franchise – that doesn’t produce a
reasonable profit for the parent corporation gets closed down, boarded up or sold
off. If you fail to see all of your life as a God-given opportunity for productive
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