Amen, this is the Word of God. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 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. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up, and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, I also love you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full. Father we thank you for your work. We believe the word of God, the Bible, the scriptures is the true and reliable copy of the original autographs where God the Holy Spirit moved upon 40 men over a 1500 year time frame to give us both the will and the word of our God. And so we seek to understand the word of God. We seek to read it and study it and pray about it. We seek to Alter the way we live our lives so that we may be in accord with the Word of God Because we believe it to be true In our study on the communion of saints, I pray God that you will Hearts to your word that we will believe what you have said Pray God that you will guard my tongue Reach only that we're right You will give me unction and anointing that I may herald the gospel correctly and fully. I pray that you will give eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to believe those that are gathered here this morning, those that are watching by means of the internet, and those who will watch this at some later time. And I pray you will do all these things to your own glory and to the good of your people. In Jesus' holy name, amen. You may be seated. To the glory of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, amen. Now I've long believed that most people, both in and out of the church, have a fairly good handle on issues like judgment and damnation, punishment, wrath, and God's anger against sin. Those issues are almost universally recognized and understood by both sinner and saint. We're bad, and we constantly do bad things, and God is good, and therefore God is angry with us, and he's going to throw most of us into hell. In fact, in my travels over the last 54 years, I found that the reason most people say they don't believe in hell is because they realize they're going there. And rather than repent, they would simply prefer not to think about it. But what eludes people, however, is an issue that makes up the very core of Christianity, and that is God's grace. So after the church being on the earth for over 2,000 years, almost every person in this country having a Bible, in spite of the fact that it is hard to go through even a day without hearing somebody say something about God and salvation, fewer people today seem to understand the foundational issue of the entire Bible, which is the grace of God. And to me, that's unconscionable. The fact that many cannot even discuss the grace of God with more than two words is one of the great scandals of our time and something about which we should hang our heads in shame. And as far as I could determine, the only way to fix this problem is to teach about the grace of God repeatedly until it sinks down into our hearts and minds. So while far too many in the modern church are very well versed in the most intricate of political details, the grace of God about which nobody is going to heaven remains a mystery about which few, if any, are even concerned. I simply cannot understand how that could be. But what bothers me even more is that few, if any, seem to even care. And even fewer than that are determined to fix the problem. Suffice it to say that I see this problem, and I'm greatly concerned about it. And I plan to fix this problem, at least with the members of the Covenant of Peace Church. In every single religion on earth except Christianity, lost sinners have to do something to make themselves attractive to God or to make themselves worthy for God to save them. So in the teaching of salvation in every religion on earth, including modern Judaism, the differences between the issue of personal merit is fundamental and the only differences between the various religions is in the details of what we have to do so that we can merit or earn or deserve or be entitled for God to rescue us from his wrath and allow us to go to heaven. So everything from being baptized to attending the mass, to going through the rite of penance, to speaking in tongues, to walking down an aisle, to raising your hand, to praying a prayer, to taking communion, to going on a pilgrimage, to flying airplanes through buildings, false and man-made religions have taught and are teaching right now that lost sinners have to do these things so that they can become good enough for God to save them. Now what we have to come to grips with, dear friends, is that these teachings are not merely wrong. They are abominable heresies. In other words, these teachings damn people to hell if they understand them and believe in them. Let me say this another way. If a lost sinner hears someone teach that the way of salvation is based on that sinner doing something to make himself acceptable to God, and he comprehends what is being taught and embraces it, that sinner will never be saved. Now he's already lost, but this false teaching will guarantee that he will never be rescued from that lost condition. Now nobody has the right to do this to another person. So what is also true is that those who have deceived people by teaching one or more versions of this heresy will burn in hell forever too. So all variations of what is called a work-based salvation system guarantee three things. Number one, lost people are going to stay lost. Saved people will stay ignorant of the word of God and God's grace. And the teachers of this false religion will be damned by God. And God will not be glorified. And people will not receive the fullness of their joy. The Bible teaches that the old covenant was between God and man. The Old Covenant said, if you, the people, do this, then I, God, will do that. For example, in Deuteronomy 28, 1 through 14, Almighty God said this. Nat shall be if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all of his commandments which I command you today. The Lord your God will set you on high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the Lord your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the offspring of your body, and the produce of your ground, and the offspring of your beasts, and the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock, Bless shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Bless shall you be when you come in. Bless shall you be when you go out. The Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be defeated before you. They will come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns and in all that you put your hand to and he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. So all the people of the earth will see that you were called by the name of the Lord, and they will be afraid of you. The Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the offspring of your body, in the offspring of your beast, and in the produce of your ground, in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open for you his good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain in your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. The Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you only will be above, and you will not be underneath. If you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God which I charge you today to observe them carefully and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today to the left or to the right to go after other gods to serve them. Now, I've been in a lot of churches and they'd read this passage and people would stand up on their feet and start clapping and shouting and hollering and praising God. Let me just say this to you, the unarguable proof, you can argue with me about a lot of things, here's what you can't argue with me about. The unarguable proof that many people today miss the main message of this passage lies in the fact that when they heard this read, they would shout and praise God and rejoice over what God said here. because fundamentally those New Testament believers, who supposedly understood and celebrated that everything God does is by grace and through faith, actually thought they could earn or merit all these blessings by simply doing what verse one said, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments, which I command you today. So all we had to do to deserve or to be entitled to receive all these blessings was to obey God's commandments perfectly, without any flaw or failure. That's it, that's all you gotta do. I was in a church one time and the preacher got up and said, stop sinning. I said, well, there you go. We've been waiting 2,000 years for somebody to tell us that. All we gotta do is stop sinning, there you go. Piece of cake, right? But it never seemed to dawn on them that not only was their perfect obedience not possible, but the fact that they thought they actually could reach a place where they merited these blessings and that God would then be obligated to give them was a hideous sin against the grace of God. In other words, for anybody to take the square peg of a promise from the Old Covenant and to try to put it into the round hole of the New Covenant perverts their understanding of the grace of God. Let me say this another way. To use an old covenant mentality and to try to superimpose that onto a new covenant situation is to, at best, damage their comprehension of grace. But at worst, it destroys their understanding of grace until the heresy of the Judaizers, some people call that legalism, becomes very attractive to them. Nobody that reads the Bible with any degree of honesty should ever rejoice at Deuteronomy 28, 1-14. God the Holy Spirit did not move on Moses so he would give anyone cause to rejoice. This passage should make us all weep. Because the only reason it's in the Bible is to irrefutably demonstrate how the fall of Adam totally and radically ruined us all to the degree that we simply cannot obey God in a way that this passage requires. Huh? That's right. So when the children of Israel walked into the promised land, there was a split in the mountains. There was one guy standing on this mountain and one guy standing on this mountain. And this guy would say, it will come to pass if you will hearken diligently in the voice of the Lord your God to observe all his commandments, which I command you this day. Bless shall you be in the field. Bless shall you be in the city. Bless shall be the basket in your store. This guy was coming as they were walking through. This guy said, and it will come to pass if you do not hearken diligently under the voice of the Lord your God. Curse shall you be in the city. Curse shall you be in the field. Curse shall be your bath. And curse, curse, curse, curse, bless, bless, bless, bless. And the children of Israel entered the promised land between those two opinions. Huh? That's right. How'd it work out? How'd it work out? Nobody can do what this commands. No human on earth can obey God's law perfectly except Jesus. Except Jesus. You are not saved because you keep God's law. You are saved because you have faith and trust in the only one who did keep God's law, and that's Jesus Christ. And if you believe you can earn it, all you gotta do is prove me wrong. Knock yourself out. Be perfect, be sinless, and I will agree with you. It's ought to be pretty easy, right? Moses didn't keep Moses' law. Huh? That's right. But our problem doesn't end with us simply not keeping God's commandments perfectly, because Deuteronomy 28 does not stop at verse 14. It stops at verse 68. So from verse 15 over the next 54 verses, God proves that we are hopelessly destroyed by Adam's sin, as God's curses are promised three times more than his blessings. So the second part of the old covenant was, but if you do not do what I command, I, God, will ban you. So if we wrongly believe we are entitled to the blessings of verses 1 through 14, if we obey perfectly and to be consistent, we must also believe we are in line with the curses of verses 15 through 68 if we do not obey perfectly. But here's the problem. We cannot obey God perfectly. Nobody can. Moses himself didn't. And so if we wrongly believe that the promise of all the blessings of verses 1 through 14 are ours, as long as we obey, and we also acknowledge that we cannot obey all of God's commandments perfectly, then all that this chapter does is to damn us. That's all it's in the Bible to do, is to show us that we're lost, to drive us to Jesus Christ. But either way we go, whether we falsely believe we actually can obey God perfectly, or we realize that we are damned because we can't, all we have done is to cast God's grace off to the side and ignored it. And that is legalism. It is not Christianity. Taking Deuteronomy 28 completely out of context to make it say something it was never designed to say is one of the most common examples that I am personally familiar with. that illustrates our glaring ignorance of the issue that we talk about, read about, sing about, and pray about the most, God's amazing grace. But it also illustrates a glaring ignorance of how infinitely superior the New Covenant is to the Old. The Old Covenant was never designed to save anyone. All that the Old Covenant was for was to convince all of God's chosen people that salvation is the sovereign work of God alone and is not the product of human effort, not even noble or religious effort. And that is why the Holy Bible teaches that salvation is by God's grace alone, through the gift of saving faith alone, and Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. Now, whether you realize this or not, that little four bullet thing there is one of the major causes of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. So after 500 years of Protestants and Romans being on the earth together, most Romans understand this while most Protestants do not. That's why I'm teaching it. I never heard this taught in churches that I attended. I was never aware of these things till I started this church. This is the cause, this is the formal cause of the Protestant Reformation. We do not agree with Rome how lost people are saved. Now I would suggest that's a pretty important issue. The second thing that caused the Protestant Reformation, we don't agree who has final authority to bind the conscience or bring conviction into the life of people. They say it's the Pope. We say it's scripture. Somebody's wrong. Somebody is eternally wrong. Somebody needs to repent or we cannot be joined back together. And it ought to break our heart that we're not joined together. It's not okay that we're not together. However, we cannot be together unless they repent of their false teaching and man-made tenants. And I don't see any move toward that in my travels. Now, it's not that we're not trying and it's not that we're not praying about it. But until that happens, we are at odds with how people get saved and who has final authority. Those are serious issues. It's got nothing to do with personality. And the Latin phrases that the 16th century church developed to verify that was salvation is sola gratia, by grace alone, sola fide, by faith alone, solus Christus, by Christ alone, and sola dea gloria, to the glory of God alone. Because the new covenant is not between God and man. The New Covenant is between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and we are simply the beneficiaries of all the work of all three persons of the Godhead, and that is why the Bible clearly and repeatedly says that salvation is not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Let me try to say it another way. If all that the New Covenant did was to give us a different set of requirements that we have to measure up to in order to find favor with God, Okay, but if that's true, Brother Blair, then what is the requirement to find favor with God? Well, Jesus said in John chapter 3, verse 3, And as we have discovered, the miracle of the new birth is a sovereign act of God alone. So it is unbiblical to think or say or teach or believe. We must believe so that we may be born again. Or we must do something in order to be born again. The Bible does not teach that. The Bible has never taught that. The new birth is the gracious and sovereign act of God in giving spiritually dead people new spiritual life. In other words, the new birth is the product of God's grace alone. Lost sinners do not cooperate in their own spiritual birth any more than they cooperated in their own natural birth, right? They do not pray for it. They don't ask for it. They don't even want it at first. They can't. They're spiritually dead. So the new birth is sovereignly given to lost sinners who have been chosen by God for salvation. And it is sovereignly and graciously imposed upon them. You've heard me say this a lot. June the 25th, 1971, Friday night, I was doing my best to sin. I was trying as hard as I could to do something bad. And I almost succeeded, but not quite. Instead, I was born again, justified and adopted that night, but it wasn't my fault. And from that moment until this morning, God has changed me. Now, I didn't want to be born again. I wasn't asking to be born again. I was trying to get drunk and get some girls. That's what I was trying to do. And normally when I tried to do that, I was successful. And so I was half looped, but not fully looped. And so I went to find the girls in this place, and lo and behold, just what a coincidence, There was a crusade going on in there that I would have never gone in there if I'd have known it was a crusade. It's like inviting gangsters to visit your new jail. They don't want to come to see your new jail. They're not interested in the jail. Lost sinners don't care about church. They don't care about Jesus. They don't care about anything. All they care about is God leaving them alone. And then somehow, and we call it the miracle of the new birth, God gets a hook in their jaw and reels them in. Amen. And somehow he changes them, called a miracle, and he gives them a new nature. And from that moment until they die, they're happy about that. They're happy that God changed all of their plans, interrupted their schedule, imposed himself on them and told them to do something they didn't want to do before he moved on them. Right? Is that y'all's testimony? Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Everybody gets saved the same way. It's not their fault. That's right. And so here we are gathered together 2,000 years after the Bible was finished, and I declare we all came the same way they came in the Bible. It is amazing when you stop and think about it. Yeah. Okay. Lost sinners do not cooperate in their own spiritual birth. They do not pray for it. They don't ask for it. They don't even want it. They can't. They're spiritually dead. So the new birth is sovereignly given to lost sinners who have been chosen by God for salvation. And it is sovereignly and graciously imposed on them so we are born again so that we may have both the power and the desire to believe. We're given that new nature first, and that equips us then to believe and to repent. Huh? Okay, but then what is the condition that he's now born? That person is now in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And we must understand that like the term Trinity, our union with Jesus Christ is a central theme in the New Testament, even though the term itself is not used. But the term Christian is used only three times in the entire New Testament. Yet I would suggest it's what the New Testament is all about. So let me tell you specifically about this union in all 27 books of the New Testament. Here in John 15, the apostle used the term abide to discuss our union with Jesus. As Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches that come off from the vine. but that we are always connected to the vine and do not live by themselves. So we are always connected to this Jesus that allows us to be spiritually alive and equips us then to bear godly fruit. Now the term bearing fruit could be said obeying Jesus. It could be said walking with God. It could be said serving the Lord. It could be said If you're striving to be obedient, if you are following Jesus, you're bearing godly fruit. That's what that means. And the fruit is visible, tangible, literal, physical. You can talk about it. You can see it in the actions of others. You can talk about it. You can see it in the actions of others. So it's not some hidden mystery. What causes the bearing of godly fruit is the hidden mystery. But the godly fruit itself is open and out there. And so you love the things you used to hate and you hate the things you used to love. And that changes your behavior, right? I hadn't forgot how to get drunk. But I don't want to get drunk. I don't want to take dope. I don't want to curse. I don't want to run around. I don't want to do it because I'm changed. Huh? Praise the Lord. Scripture is clear that we did not connect ourselves to Jesus through a choice. are based on anything we did to supposedly earn our merit or deserve it. Instead, Jesus sovereignly brought us into this union with himself by God's grace. That's part of what grace is. And even though we did nothing to be sons and daughters of Adam, and recipients of his sin, rebellion, fall, and curse. By God's grace and to God's glory, believers also did nothing to be people who have been given a new identity, such that we are no longer united to Adam, but have entered into an eternal union with the Lord Christ. And even as we inherited the divine curse on Father Adam, so too by the miracle of the new birth, we've been brought into a new humanity in Jesus Christ. Therefore, all the riches of God's grace have been given to us to transform us into his likeness and ultimately to lead to the fruition of that union when we see Jesus face to face. Hallelujah. Last time I told you that to begin this new year of 2025, I want to take a short vacation from our verse-by-verse journey through the Gospel of Matthew and what the early church called the communion of saints. The Bible teaches about how we can obey the 51 and other passages that we find in the New Testament. And Jesus answered that question with just three words, abide in me. Because what Jesus said, if we would abide in him, we would bear godly fruit. That includes obeying all the one another passages. But what I fear is that far to me in the modern church, you can't obey all the one another verses when Jesus did not teach that was the way. Jesus taught that the way to bear godly fruit was not to concentrate on bearing godly fruit, but to simply abide in him. Look again at verse four and five of John 15. 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. I am the vine, you are the branches. To me and I in him, he bears much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You can't do something. You can't do a little something. You can do nothing, Jesus said. Huh? Now zero in the middle of verse 15. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. Automatically, automatically it happens. The source is not concentrating on bearing godly fruit. The source is concentrating on abiding in Jesus. And the Bible said, Jesus said, you will bear godly fruit. It's automatic. It flows out. You can't stop it. Huh? 1,700 years ago, Augustine said, love God and then do whatever you want. And people go, golly, he was justifying sin. No, he wasn't. No, he wasn't. Because if you love God, you only want to do what's right. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. The first thing in that verse is not keeping the commandments. That's what everybody concentrates on. We've got to keep the commandments. You should keep the commandments. But the first thing in that verse is loving Jesus. So that's where we're lacking. Let me try to say this to you. The telltale sign that we are fallen is that we don't know how to love. Love is the issue, not obedience. Love is the issue. We don't know how to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And therefore, we don't love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's what the new birth is all about. We don't love our neighbor as ourselves. The only person who ever did any of this was Jesus. Don't think for a second you being nice to your neighbor is you loving them as yourself. Because you should pay their light bill. You should mow their yard. You should cook supper for them. You should do for them like you do for yourself. You should buy their clothes. You should pay for their school. Buy them a car. Put gas in it. That's loving them as you love yourself. Nobody does that. So where we're vacant, where we're sinning, where we're wrong is not in obedience as much as it is in our deficit of love. And that's what salvation is all about. Salvation reconciles sinners not to heaven. God reconciles sinners back to himself. That's the key. Heaven's great, I'm all about heaven, I plan to be there. But if Jesus wasn't in heaven, all heaven would be is a fantastic vacation spot. What makes heaven heaven is Jesus, right? Right, so I wanna be with Jesus. I've got loved ones that went on before me. I don't wanna see them first. No, I wanna see the man that lived and died and rose again first. and 2nd and 3rd and 4th and 955th and 7th. You're going to have to buy a ticket to see me. I want to be with Jesus. I'll be the crazy guy in the back of the room going, yes! Because I don't deserve to be there. So that's the key. If we abide in Jesus, if we are in union with Christ, we will bear godly fruit. So when you're not bearing godly fruit, when you don't even want to bear godly fruit, your union with Christ is what's lacking. It's your abiding that is lacking. You don't need to put forth more effort to obey. That's legalism. And bearing fruit has to do with our obedience. So our obedience to the commands of scripture, do not flow out from us concentrating on our obedience, but by us concentrating and yielding to our abiding in Jesus. More than any other passage, John 15, 1 through 11 is the place where the doctrine of the union of Christ came alive to me. It is where the reality of Jesus sovereignly bringing me into union with him became a reality to be personally experienced, rather than simply a doctrine that explains things. This passage has proved to be enormously important to me in both the experience and the articulation of the doctrine of union with Christ. Now, just one verse before John 15.1, John 14.31, Jesus said, so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded me, get up, let us go from here. So Jesus put his entire ministry, especially those final few hours, under the command of his Father. I do exactly as the Father commanded me. So God the Father was overseeing the whole thing. So Jesus will give his life and become the bread of life, the water of life, as well as the door of life, but the Father himself is tending to every detail so that this work will accomplish exactly what the Father decreed before the world was. Then in the very next verse, Jesus said, I'm the true vine, my father is the vinedresser. So John 15, one through 11, is a metaphor of John 14, 31. In other words, John 15, verses one through 11, explains what Jesus meant by what he said in John 14, 31. But if you expand the narrow focus of this metaphor of Jesus is the vine and the Father is the vinedresser beyond what Jesus intended, it will display falsehood, not truth. And you can prove this by looking at verse 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. Here, Jesus compared our abiding in his love to his own abiding in the Father's love, right? Okay, yet we know that the vine does not abide in a vine dresser the way a branch abides in the vine. So by expanding this truth further than Jesus intended, the metaphor breaks down very quickly. So by that we know that's not what this metaphor was designed to show about the vine dresser. The reality is that all metaphors break down if pressed too far, parables do too. Which is why so many get the parables of Jesus so wrong. So what this metaphor is designed to teach us, why did Jesus even mention in verse one that his father was the vinedresser? Why didn't he just begin with the words of verse five? I am the vine, you're the branches. The whole paragraph is built around that metaphor and would work without any reference to the father as the vinedresser. Almost, but not all of it. every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. The reason Jesus built into this metaphor not just the vine and the branches, but also the vine and the vine dresser, is because there are two things the Father does that are important for us to know as we abide in the vine and get our life and our power from the vine. One is that God takes away fruitless branches and the other is that God prunes fruitful branches. God himself cuts away the lifeless while cultivating the living. So God destroys and God disciplines. So the branches have one of two things that will happen to them. They will be cut up or they will be cut off. As Jesus said in Luke 8.18, whoever has to him more shall be given, and whoever does not have even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him. So let's take these two works of the vinedresser one at a time. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he, the vinedresser, which is God, takes away. Now I said this is both a cutting away as well as a destroying. How so? Because of verse six, if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. Now stop and think what Jesus is saying here, because the only people that are connected to the vine are people who are already born again, right? So this is teaching that people who at least think they're born again can be still cut off. Whoa, huh? Now this is not some disjointed statement. Completion of the word. Address it in verse two and six. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. and it dries up and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. Let's agree that's not... Jesus used another metaphor in Matthew 13, 38 through 40 to point to a similar direction. The tares of the sons of the evil one, the enemy... Buckle your seatbelt now, this is gonna bother some of y'all. Before I read this, I didn't write this, okay? I had nothing to do with what Jesus said in the Bible. He never even called me. He didn't say, Brother Blair, what do you think about me putting this in Matthew 13? He never said that. So just calm down. You can throw rocks at me later. Here's the Holy Bible. The tares are the sons of the evil one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil and the harvest is the end of the age, not the end of the world, the end of the age. Now you gotta find out what age he's talking about. And the reapers are the angels. The tares are gathered up and burned with fire. The son of man will send forth his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom. Sounds to me like the kingdom's already been established. Huh? Yeah, it has. And the plan of God is to gather up, what? The reapers are gonna gather, the tares are gather up, they're gonna gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness, that's lost people, right? So the people who are gonna be removed from the earth first are tares, not wheat. Yeah, no, that's what Jesus said, you know, Jesus. And we'll throw them into the furnace of fire, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So the very first work of the vine dresser is judgment. Some of it right now and some of it at the end of the age. But that raises the question, can a branch or a disciple of Jesus have eternal life in union with Jesus and then lose it and be finally condemned? The answer lies in us determining who the branches are that are in Jesus and yet lost. And the key to understanding this is to realize that in the Gospel of John, there are people who act and talk like believers, to some extent, and yet are not genuine believers. Jesus called them tares. There are people who act and talk like disciples, to some extent, who are not true disciples. There is the chosen 12, and yet one of them is a devil. And so in the same way, there are people who act and talk like branches who are not true branches. They are in Jesus in one sense outwardly, but not truly in Jesus inwardly. Judas Iscariot is the clearest example of a person who acted and talked like a branch, who was attached to Jesus for three years. He was in the circle of the 12. He looked like he was a real and close relationship with Jesus, yet Judas was never a true believer. So the reason Jesus doesn't just say, I'm the vine, you're the branches, but includes the vine dresser in the metaphor, is because he wants us to know two great things that the Father does in tending both the vine and the branches. Number one, God sovereignly takes away fruitless branches, and number two, God sovereignly prunes fruitful branches. He cuts away the lifeless while all of us are living, he destroys and he disciplines, he cuts off. So Jesus is actually preparing his disciples for two things that will come, defection and betrayal from the inside, and persecution and suffering from the outside. Now, the best exposition of the work of the Father in being the vinedresser is Hebrews 12, verse six, verse 10, and verse 11 that says, for those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. For they, talking about our earthly fathers, disciplined us for a short time and seemed good to them. But he, God, disciplines us for our good. Why? So that we may share his holiness. Did you know that God wants you to share his own personal holiness? All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. brought to believers by lost sinners. But here in John 15 verse 20, Jesus said, Persecution is not the only way that the Father cuts and prunes the tree branches, but it is one way. But what Jesus wants us to see is that our union with Him is not isolated from our experiences in this life. It is influenced by these experiences. And he wants us to know his father sovereignly governs those experiences. So persecution and hardship and calamity do not come to the branches by chance. Our experience are not aimless or random or without purpose and meaning. They are the sovereign work of the vine dresser. And they have a very distinct and narrow purpose, more godly fruit. Verse 2b says, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that he may destroy them and they'll end up defeated and dejected and... Jesus. Oh, that's not what it says? Okay, I'm sorry, be careful. Some of y'all were saying, yes, Lord, yes, Lord. That's not what Jesus said. Every branch that bear fruits, he prunes it so that it may bring, it may bear what? That's the purpose of the pruning. And that means our experience in this union with Christ, our attachment to the vine, our abiding in Jesus, is energized and intensified and enlivened by Father-controlled experiences. There are great internal workings in union with Christ from the Holy Spirit and from Jesus as well as from the Father himself. And don't worry, you don't have to ask God for any of this. He'll give it to you anyway. You don't have to seek after it. You know, Lord, please prune me. No, no, no. He'll prune you. He'll prune you. But here the focus is on the external element. The vine dresser is not the sap nor the vine. But his work in pruning, cutting, carrying has a profound bearing on our experiences of both the sap and the vine. A picture of how this works would be Corinthians 1, 8, 9 that says, for we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead." Paul's own abiding in Christ, in God, was deeply assisted by this pruning that took him to the very point of death. So the purpose of verse 2 is that Jesus is preparing his disciples for defection and betrayal from within and persecution and suffering from without. And he's encouraging and emboldening them that his Father is in absolute control of both. No betrayer will escape, and all our hardships will draw us deeper into the enjoyment of that union with sweet Jesus. Now we might think that the stage has been perfectly set for the imperative of verse 4 where Jesus said, abide in me. and the reasoning that supports it, 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. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. So the stage is set in verses one and two. Fruitless branches are destroyed, while fruitful branches are disciplined. Therefore, abide in Jesus, because without Jesus, we can do nothing. And that makes total sense. We can do anything without Jesus, so abide in him. Yield yourself to this union, because it isn't just your fruit bearing that depends on being in union with Jesus. Our very existence depends totally on him. We must understand that there are no branches without a vine. And so when Jesus said, apart from me you can do nothing, that's what he meant. We can't do anything apart from Christ, so abide in him for your life, your fruit, and your all. Now, about the time you think we got a handle on this, there's this odd verse in this passage, verse three. There's one more thing that needed to be put in place before Jesus commanded them to abide in the vine, and that's verse three. Something had to be in place that would be distinctively Christian. Something that Jesus brought into the world unlike any other religion. Something at the heart of our Christianity, and something at the heart of what it means to abide in Christ and live the Christian life. Verse three is perhaps the strangest verse In this entire paragraph, you are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. What? He just told us to do a bunch of stuff and then he said we're already clean. Huh? In my experience being in church, the preacher just passes over verse three. He doesn't ever get into it. Jesus said that after he just said, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. He just got through saying that, and then he says, now you are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. So do we need to abide or not? Do we need to put forth effort to obey, or are we already done? We can sit back and prop our feet up and watch the game. It seems to me a whole bunch of people think that. because that's what they're doing. They don't worry about anything. The first thing to see is something you can't see in the English vocabulary of verses two and three. But if you thought long enough about the relationship between verses two and three, you could see the idea. Jesus has just said, God prunes you to make you more fruitful. Then he immediately said, you're already clean. So maybe Jesus is saying, God prunes you and already you are pruned. Or God is cleansing you and already you are cleansed. And that much you can see in the English. And that's all you need to see. But to confirm it, the Greek word for prune in verse 2 is the same word for cleanse. In other words, it's more plain in Greek that Jesus is making a play on words here. The Father prunes. He cleanses the branches to make them more suitable for fruit bearing. But keep in mind, you are already cleansed. You are already pruned. You are already suitable and have already been fitted and attached to the vine. You are already in union with Christ based on the miracle of the new birth. And Jesus says, use these exact words, you are clean once before. In John 13, Jesus washed the disciples' feet. But Peter objected, never shall you wash my feet. But then Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. In other words, there is no union between me and you, Peter, if you object to my cleansing your feet. And then Peter replied, Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and head. But then Jesus said, he who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean. But then he added, but not all of you. Because it said he knew the one who was betraying him, for this reason he said, not all of you are clean. So what's the point in both John 13 and John 15 of saying that the disciples are already clean, already completely clean? Yet they need to be washed and to be pruned. And if they reject being washed and pruned, they have no part with Jesus, no union with Christ. The answer is that our yielding to be washed and pruned is the sign that we are already washed and pruned. And this astonishing position of being already washed and already pruned, already clean, happened, Jesus said in John 15, 3, because of the word which I have spoken to you. And the word here stands for the whole message of Jesus, him being the eternal son of God, him coming in the flesh, him being without sin, him dying for his sheep, him rising from the dead. Believing the entire message of Jesus is the connection between a person and Jesus. Believing this word is the joining together that God creates between the branch and the vine between the disciple and Jesus. And in the instant of that joining, that union, that abiding, the disciple is completely clean and completely pruned. John 5, 24 is one of the clearest statements in all the gospel of what has happened to you if you are a true disciple, not like Judas. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment, but is passed out of death into life. So we have already passed from death to life. If you think it is astonishing for Jesus to say to Peter, you are already completely clean, and to say to the branches, you are already completely pruned, consider how astonishing it is to hear him say, of all true believers, you have already passed from death to life. You cannot come into judgment because you have already passed through judgment. You are already on the other side of judgment. Therefore, you will never be cut off from the vine and be burned. Hallelujah. This is the part of the stage that has not yet been set for the imperative of John 15 and four, where Jesus said, abide in me. Before he gave this command, Jesus wanted to make sure that we understand how this command works for true disciples and true branches who are in the vine. Abide in me. How are we to hear such an imperative, such a command? We are to hear it as something we must do, and we must hear it as something that has already been done This we must do, abide in Jesus. Why? Because if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away. So first, we must abide. By abiding, we will bear godly fruit, we will obey the one another passages, and we will obey them as a natural and normal function of abiding in the vine. But then we read verse three. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. My Father pruning and cleansing are simply fitting you to what you already are. Your obedience to my command is simply becoming what you already are. You will not be cut off. You will not come into judgment. You have already passed from death to life. That is the nature of the union you have with me. Yet the Father is not wasting his time when he prunes you and disciplines you. It is mere vain human reasoning to say, well, if I am clean and pruned and beyond judgment, then I don't need any discipline from the Father. But those who speak like that will hear Jesus' rebuke to Peter, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. If my Father does not prune you, you're not clean, you're not my disciple. And so prove to be my disciples. So the Father is not wasting his time in your daily pruning. He is sanctifying you and saving you and keeping you in ways that will prove you are real and genuine so that you may bring him great glory. So don't ever begrudge the ministry of the vinedresser. Prove that you are a true disciple, that you are a true believer, that you are a true branch by submitting joyfully to the pruning and the cleansing. And the point of verse 3 is do it because you are already cleansed, you are already pruned, and you are already a true disciple. Now the reason I preach this message on our union with Christ in a series on the communion of the saints is because we cannot and we will not obey the 50 or so one another verses that can be found in the New Testament unless our union with Jesus is real and viable. And this goes back to what I said in the beginning. Us obeying one another, which is in the Bible in 20-25, is not going to happen simply because we put forth effort, or because we make our minds up, or because we choose to do it. That isn't Christianity. that is pagan humanism. And hear me, there are pagans in this world who are very kind, and loving, and merciful, and patient, and a joy to be around. But they do not love Jesus, and they are not pleasing and glorifying to God. Everything we do requires a dead and a risen Savior, or it is all a flesh. And everything we do will be by the grace of God and through the gift of faith, or it is all a flesh. So we must first understand God's grace, and then we must have a real and viable union with the Lord Jesus, where He alone is divine, we are the branches, and where His Father is divine dresser, or it is all a flesh. It is my firm conviction that as we abide in Jesus, obeying Jesus will become second nature to us. We will bear godly fruit, and we will endure the Father's sovereign pruning with delight, if, if, if we are constantly abiding in Jesus in this spiritual union. Other than that, we will do nothing but build up our own self-righteousness. The Bible teaches that bearing godly fruit is the automatic result of abiding in the vine and being pruned by the Father. And obeying the one and other passages in the New Testament is bearing godly fruit. So the way we may obey the many one and other passages is by not trying real hard to obey the many one and other passages. We will automatically obey those passages by resisting the temptation to try to accomplish spiritual and godly goals through carnal means, and by simply yielding ourselves to this union with Christ and yielding ourselves to the pruning of the Father. And as we do that, we will bear godly fruit, and our fruit will grow, and our fruit will remain. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the amazing distinction between Christianity and every other religion, every other human philosophy. And we thank you, Lord, that we know that Jesus lived and died and rose again, and it is our faith in him and our faith in what he alone did that brings us into your presence. So help us, God, to decipher this and help us not to fall into the trap of either legalism or antinomianism, but help us to stay in the middle of the road. Let us look to see the goodness of God in the land of the living. In Jesus' name, amen.