Recap
Title: How To Have The Most Fruitful Life
Series: Discovering The Real Jesus
Key Text: John 15:1-17
Key Message:
The God of the Bible is the God who wants the world he created to be fruitful. God wants every person on earth, every family and every church to be fruitful.
Time and again in the scriptures we see how the blessing of God caused individuals, families and communities to flourish, often after times of great difficulty (Genesis 1:28; Genesis 12:2-3; Genesis 15:5-6; Genesis 49:22; Psalm 107:37-38 & Colossians 1:6)
As we continue our series on ‘Discovering the Real Jesus’, we see that Jesus Himself gave some important teaching on fruitfulness in chapter 15:1-17. He begins in verse 1 with one of the seven famous I am statements found in this gospel. John 15: 1 says: “I am the true vine….”
Jesus is using the picture of a grapevine, where a single vine supports many branches and produces many grapes. In the Passover meal the fruit of the vine symbolised God’s goodness to His people.
Fruitfulness is dependent on relationship with Jesus (John 15:1, 4-5, 7, 9-14, 17; 2 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 3:16; Galatians 5:22-23)
Remain connected with Jesus
Remain in His word
Remain in His Love
Fruitfulness involves a process (John 15: 1-2, 6; Hebrews 12:11)
Cutting off
Cutting back
Fruitfulness will bring great results (John 15:5, 8, 16, Acts 11:26)
Abundant fruit
Lasting fruit
Apply
For many people relationship with God is the very last thing that they would consider if they want a fruitful and fulfilling life. Rather they would focus on romantic relationships, business relationships and the pursuit of sex, money, power, pleasure, position, drink and drugs. However, you can never have a truly fruitful life if you keep God out of the picture.
What Jesus is teaching here is very simple; you need to be connected to God if you want life. Christ is the root and source of life. The branches are the followers of Jesus. But it’s not enough to just become connected; you need to stay connected and this is the emphasis of the teaching Jesus gives here.
Remain connected with Jesus - (John 15:1, 4-5) - The word “abide” or “remain,” which is from a Greek word meaning to abide, dwell, live, remain.
The thought here is of ongoing relationship and continuity. All relationships need constant attention. We need to stay close to God in the face of many things that can pull us away.
Are you connected with Jesus? Do you need to daily develop your relationship with Jesus? So that His life can flow to us and through us.
Remain in His word - John 15:7 - Each time Jesus Himself was tempted by the Devil He came back at him with the words of Scripture. (2 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 3:16)
You must not ignore the Bible or be complacent about reading and studying it. If you want a fruitful life, a fruitful family, a fruitful church, then the words of Jesus must be constantly in our hearts, our minds and speech.
Do you study and rely on God’s word? Do you understand and believe that once we learn and trust the word of God, we can experience a completely fruitful life.
Remain in His love – John 15:9-14 - Love is at the very heart of Christianity and must be very evident if we wish to be fruitful in our lives, homes and ministries.
The fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Here Jesus commands us to love others as He has loved us, starting with the love amongst Christian brothers and sisters. Love is not an option. It is something Jesus repeatedly insists on. If you want to have a fruitful life, then you must love God and love people. It’s as simple as that. So, fruitfulness is dependent on our relationship with Jesus.
Do you have God’s love at the centre of your life? Do you see yourself as His child and see God as your father?
Fruitfulness involves a process - Fruitfulness is not automatic. Just like the necessity of being formed as a disciple, so each Christian needs to go through a process to be productive.
Cutting off (John 15:1-2, 6) - God wants to cut out those things in our lives that stop us being productive. Sinful actions, wrong habits, bad attitudes, ungodly relationships all have to go if you are going to be in the right condition to be used by God.
Throughout history all spiritual revivals begin with movements of repentance when there is a cutting out of what is unfruitful and unfaithful.
Cutting back (John 15:2) - Fruitful branches are cut back, often dramatically, to produce further growth. Pain, sorrow, sickness and suffering, loss, bereavement, failure, disappointment and frustrated ambition are some of the ways your life may be pruned. But actually, you can grow in your relationship with God and dependence on God through these times. (Hebrews 12:10-11)
God’s pruning in your life is to get you prepared for greater blessing.
Fruitfulness will bring great results - We can see far greater fruitfulness than we may imagine in our personal lives, in our families and in the church. Here Jesus was addressing his disciples and enlarging their vision about what would happen when they lived close to him.
Abundant fruit (John 15:5, 8) - Jesus had shown the disciples how to feed the multitudes. But it was on the day of Pentecost when 3000 people were added to the church that the disciples understood that they too would now minister to very large groups of people.
Lasting fruit (John 15:16) - Acts 11:21 we read of how a great church grew quickly at Antioch after some ordinary Christians had shared the good news of Jesus.
These new people didn’t drift away but were consolidated in their faith. Verse 26 says: So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.’
Do you want to live the most fruitful life? Do you want to see greater fruitfulness in your family and in the church? Make sure you have a close relationship with Him, let Him prepare you and increase your level of fruitfulness that will show that you are a truly a disciple of Christ who will bring great glory to God.
