«   |   »

The True Branch Abides (John 15:1-8)

IMG_0017On Sunday, March 13, 2016, Pastor Joe Troutman preached “The True Branch Abides” from John 15:1-8.

Everyone who has true faith in Jesus Christ is a branch connected to the vine and you will produce fruit by the power of the Holy Spirit.

1. The True Vine and the Vinedresser—Jesus’s final “I AM” statement: “I am the True Vine.” He is the answer to the prayer in Psalm 80 for the restoration of the vine of Israel. Those who believe in Jesus will be grafted into the True Vine. God the Father is the Vinedresser (literally, the “farmer”) who cuts away unfruitful branches, and prunes the fruitful that they may bear more fruit. (Romans 11:11-24). Though pruning may be a “cathartic” experience for the abiding believer (2 Corinthians 4:17), it is far preferable to being cast off and thrown into the fire.

2. Branches That Don’t Abide—Some members of the visible church are unbelievers. While they may repress their sin for a time, imitating the bearing of fruit, in the end their unbelief and lack of genuine fruit will be revealed, and such branches will be cut off and cast into the fire—despite their membership in the visible church, unbelieving members will spend eternity in hell.

3. The Fount of Fruit—Branches disconnected from the Vine do not, and cannot, bear fruit. Union with Christ is a prerequisite to bearing fruit. Christ promises fruit will be borne by the branch that asks for fruit, so the Father may be glorified, and the branch may prove to be a true disciple.

Listen to “The True Branch Abides” (John 15:1-8) at mcopc.org.

Posted on March 29, 2016 at 6:05 pm in Commentary, Gospel of John, Podcast, Sermon, Troutman, Joe   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL

Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: