Resurrection Reality – Bearing Fruit is the message from the 5th Sunday in the Easter season. With the taste of the wine still on the disciples lips as they walked away from the upper room to the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus most likely passed a few vineyards. Jesus uses an illustration of being the vine and all of his followers are the branches that bear much fruit. This works! It makes sense, but to make a vine bear fruit there needs to be some pruning. An old pastor once wrote, imagine what’s going through the mind of the vine when the caretaker approached with a pruning knife and a bucket of manure. It’s not a pretty picture, but the end result will be good!
As the Father goes into our lives how does he cut off and prune? It is any way that God limits any part of your life – whether that be through a friend or family member, or speeding ticket or disease diagnosis. Our heavenly Father will use anything to keep you away from sin. There are two ways that people misunderstand our heavenly Gardener’s pruning. Don’t think that you need to wait for a diagnosis of cancer for the cutting to begin. AND don’t think that if you prune out every vice in your life God will somehow love you more than the wild grape vine sitting next to you who only produces occasionally.
What can’t pruning do according to our Savior? 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. There were people in Luther’s day who thought that to be closer to God a person needed to cloister him or herself away in a monastery. Focus on living a holy life and work the sin right out of themselves. But that didn’t work. Because the purpose of pruning ihttps://youtu.be/tZTEs_zNR8osn’t to make ourselves holy – we already are holy. Not because we’ve finally mastered out sin, but because a long time ago Jesus paid for it.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s message taken from John 15, Resurrection Reality – Bearing Fruit.
Book(s): John
Series: Resurrection Reality
Tag(s): Easter
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg