I Am the Vine, You Are the Branches
First B Jackson
2023-01-08

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Good morning everybody, how are we? It's good to see you. While you're coming in, I'd love to share a verse with you to lead us in the worship. It's from, second Corinthians four. It says, for God who said, let there be light in the darkness has made this light shine into our hearts so that we can know the glory of God that's seen in the face of Jesus.

We'll start by singing this is amazing grace. Would you stand and sing with me?

Alright. Let's sing. Who breaks the power? Who breaks the power of sin and darkness? Whose love is mine and so much stronger.

Alright. Yeah. You can all have a seat. What a great reminder that song is. Just gets us in the right mood to remind us of how good our God is and what he's promised us.

We've got a lot of announcements for you. Hold tight here. Monday nights at first speed is going on tomorrow night.

Yep. We're on tomorrow, and we're in, Mark five two, two miracles that Jesus performs where two healings, but both in response to faith. It's so good. And meal, music, message tomorrow, 06:00 down the hall.

And if you haven't been in a while or you've never been before, come on back. It's been really joyous lately. There's a good gospel conversation afterwards where people can share, and it really opens things up and and makes it interactive. It's really special. Connect hours down the hall in between services.

Great chance to meet everybody else who goes to the second service. Also get some free food. That's always nice. The men's word retreat is coming up in February. All the information is there.

It's also on the website. Guys, we'd love to have you. Please stop by. There's brochures outside to if you could sign up in advance, just to get the ball rolling, invite your friends. They don't have to go to this church.

They don't have to go to any church. Bring them by. We would love to have them. You can contact Matt Littlesteman. He's also right here.

Yep. He's got his hand raised up over here. Let's let's get some guys going to that. That'd be great. And the men's snowmobile retreat, commonly known as the best weekend of the year.

It's it's fantastic because the ladies get a break from us, and, we get to go snowmobiling. It's great. Such a good time. You have to bring your money into the church. Checks made out to Old Faithful Christian Ranch, if you would.

If you have any questions, let me know. You can sign up on the website, which is great. The congregational meeting is in here on January 29 between services. Only members can vote, but everybody can hear the information and kinda work through things. We'll be working through some new elders and trustees.

It's a good time to get

to know your church. It's a good time to get involved, find out what what's going on, what people's jobs are around here. A bunch

of the staff is gonna speak. It's gonna be more information than you've heard in previous meetings. We're trying to open it up and help you guys to see the process of what's going on and maybe where you can help out, which is pretty great. There's also a new women's community Bible study. I guess it's not new, it's just coming back.

It'll be on Wednesdays at 10AM to 12PM starting this week here at the church. It's an eight week study. And if you would RSVP ahead of time so they know how many people are coming, kinda get the ball rolling. Again, great place to invite people who've maybe never been to church or have fallen away for a while. Bring them back.

This is a great time. Also on the website. So let's do that. Young adult Bible study, Erin Anderson is gonna be leading this. Erin's in the back there.

I'm so glad she's taken this up. It's exciting. It moves around locations every Sunday night, 06:30. If there's anybody who'd be interested in hosting, maybe providing dinner for these folks, even if you you're not a young adult, maybe talk to Erin. That'd be a great thing to do there.

Her number's there and on the website, which is exciting. Congregational meeting, it's on there twice because we want you to do it twice. We want you to be there. And now if you if you like what you've seen right now, let's get turn it over to Professional. My twin brother is a podcast host, and he wants to walk you through what that is and what he's what he's trying to to tell us about.

Yeah.

Thank you, Nick, for that wonderful introduction. So I'm here to talk to you about sponsoring me, Chris Darron, as a digital missionary, which is probably a new concept, but that's okay. We're gonna walk through it together. First of all, I wanna give you an idea of who I am and who my brother is. I am currently a school bus driver here in Teton County.

I drive school bus between thirty and fifty hours per week. I'm also an improv comedian. I've lived in Jackson and attended this church for almost thirteen years. Woo hoo. Member of First Baptist and most importantly Nick's brother, as you all know him.

He's a great asset to me. But there are some things you may not know about us that happened before we moved here thirteen years ago. I was the writer, director, producer of two independent feature length films that my brother also produced, and we did everything on. They're called bringing up Bobby and between the walls, two evangelistic gospel films that have reached literally hundreds of thousands of people around the world. On YouTube alone, a 143,000 views on those, but they've also been on television.

They were on if you remember Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, they were on shelves back there. And unfortunately, Nick and I could not keep up the momentum because we we made each of these movies for $20,000 of our own money and burned out. The good news is we moved to Jackson. Well, that was awesome. But we burned out and had to stop making the movies because we just didn't have the money to keep it up.

When you're doing everything and working other jobs, it gets very difficult. Which brings me to what I've been doing for the last five years which is called Truths. It's a podcast. Now what is a podcast? That's the most common question I get.

A podcast is an online radio show that's often free that is always on. So instead of like if you're listening to k o h k o k h o l here, you have to listen at the exact right time at the exact right day on the exact right channel. Well, with a podcast, anybody with a cell phone or an Internet connection can listen anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night, which is just an incredible technology. It's always on and it's always free. So unlike when Nick and I made the movies, each DVD had to be printed and stuffed and sent somewhere, and somebody had to buy it for $15.

Here, anybody can send the podcast out free with just a link anywhere in the world. It's an incredible technology. So why do ministry on the Internet? Because we're we're used to sending we're really good actually at this church at sending people physical locations to speak to five, ten, 15, a 100 people around the world. Well, the the joy of doing ministry on the on the Internet is you can reach people anywhere.

So it's also it's cheap. It's way cheaper than sending those DVDs out like we used to. It's far reaching. I've got listeners who are in Kenya. India was actually one of

the

top countries downloading the podcast for a while. South Africa, Lebanon, The UK, obviously The United States, and Canada. And it's available twenty four seven, which is pretty fantastic. So specifically, what is this free online radio show that I do? It's called truce, and it is a history show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church.

We press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. So essentially, what that means is it's a history podcast that tries to figure out why are we so angry and how can we do better. So the current season right now is about the history of Christian fundamentalism in The United States up through the SCOPES monkey trial. Now the SCOPES trial, you may remember from history class, was this trial in Tennessee in 1925 that tried to decide whether or not we could teach evolution in public schools in The United States. So in order to do a good job with this, and this episode has not yet come out, a year and a half ago I knew I was going to do this episode and so I was in Tennessee for something else and I decided to go to the actual location and record audio where this court case took place.

And so the first we're gonna play a clip from it, but the first voice you're going to hear is the gentleman who runs the organization that preserves that building. And the second voice you'll hear is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who won the Pulitzer for his research on this event. So with Blake's That's from the drugstore. Yeah. And the table's pretty small.

Seems like for such a big plane you'd want a larger table. It's about the size of a large pizza. Yeah. Very large pizza. Really?

A table. Not that big. But it came from the drugstore that a hundred years ago hosted a meeting that kicked off the whole brouhaha that put Dayton on the map.

That was owned by the chairman of the school board.

The drugstore sold ice cream and drinks, but also stuff you probably wouldn't expect, like textbooks, including the one that would become central to this battle over evolution. Dayton is a charming quintessential small town, a square, statues, its own brewery. But in the nineteen twenties, it seemed like Dayton was on the way out.

Actually reducing in size as the old blast furnace had closed. Ray County was a farming community, strawberries, shipped by rail up to the cities in the North.

By the way, the voice you hear is the ever interesting Edward Larson. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his excellent book on the trial and teaches at Pepperdine University. This piece of Tennessee was different than the rest of the state. So I wanted to pick one that was purposely not controversial but gave you an idea of what it sounds like. So it takes me twenty to forty hours to make every single episode and the episodes come out every other week.

And remember, I work thirty to fifty hours a week driving a school bus. So the reason I'm approaching everybody here is that I would like to leave the school bus even though it's been a great job. I'd like to leave the bus barn and start doing the podcast full time. Podcasting, I want to remind you again, is a mission field. And I've had so here's some stats from 2022.

I've been doing the podcast for over five years. In 2022 alone, I had over 143,000 downloads of the podcast. That's about 2,000 downloads per episode, although I have some that have gone over 5,000. So imagine this, if Truths were a church here in Jackson, Wyoming, it would be by far the largest church in Jackson running on a school bus driver's budget. That would be essentially filling the Center For The Arts Main Theater four times over every two weeks.

So that's what we're talking about. Praise God. That's over 9,000 devices act, checked on the podcast in 2022 alone. So I'm coming to you asking for a number of things. First of all, for your prayer.

Prayer for the audience who is listening to this show. A lot of the times, the audience is people who are struggling with their faith because they look at other Christians are like, why is everybody so angry? And they're trying to figure out a way to stay and to believe in Jesus Christ. And my goal with the show is to keep bumping everybody back into the mission of the gospel, loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Over and over again that's what I'm doing and I'm doing that through history and giving context of how we got here because I think that if we can understand how we got to a present moment, we can best understand how to fix it and how to continue to believe.

So 2000 people who were hopefully I don't tear up. I'm sorry. There are 2,000 people every two weeks who are listening to me and who have put their faith in me or are looking for hope. And I'm bringing you 2,000 people. I'm really excited about it.

It's been an honor. It's a huge honor to do it and I need to I just need a little help. Goodness I can see why Ray tears up every week. Goodness. So to give you some idea of how invested they are in the show, over a 100 people already give to this podcast regularly.

And that's around the world, mostly people I don't know, which is also just incredible. So if you wanna you wanna give to the show, sorry, you can give by check or Venmo at at truce podcast. You can pledge online or in person. I'll be in the back at the back. You can take down your name and information.

If you wanna listen to the show, I know not everybody knows what a podcast is. The technology has been around for twenty years, and it is a marvelous technology. And you can listen to it on the website also from the main page. You can also connect. There's a button that says donate.

There's a button right on the home page that says pledge if you'd like to give a pledge. You can also ask my amazing twin brother who looks just like me. He can help you out. Most of all, thank you so much for being such a supportive sending church, for being a blessing to Nick and I. When we came here thirteen years ago after having made the movies, we were hurt and wounded people.

And by the grace of God, we've been restored, and you guys have been a big part of that. So thank you for putting up with us, and God bless you all.

Would you stand with me? And I'd I'd love to to pray too before we we sing specifically for this podcast. Lord, we thank you for ministry in all all its all its the ways to get the gospel out. And, Lord, this is a truly powerful and effective way, and we ask your blessing, Lord, and how, Lord, that you'd stir us how that we can show our support. Because, Lord, we want the message out to love you with our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves, Lord, and to draw people that have been estranged to the church back to you.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.

There's a song in my soul.

If you're in trouble, hell, beyond it. Come to Jesus and find your peace. And if you run down in the end, it comes to Jesus and find your strength. This is his. As he is

Amen. You can be seated here for for a moment. This is the worship through giving part of the service, and I'll ask the ushers and also Brian McCooey, one of our elders to come forward to pray and ask God's blessing over the offering too. And we're gonna sing, they'll know we're Christians by our love. Listen to Jesus here.

He says, love one another as I loved you. That's that self giving, others focused love of Jesus, unconditional. Love one another like that, he's saying. Because when we love one another like that, it proves to the world that we are his disciples. Brian, can I ask you to pray?

Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for blessing us. Living here in Jackson's amazing and we just pray that you bless this offering. Help us to meet all the needs of the church and help us to bless the community, lord.

Help us to with our benevolence fund to really help and bless the hurting here in Jackson. Yes. So Lord we thank you for this offering and we just love you. Thank you.

Children's Church. Children's Church is on. So, you can start making your way downstairs, and, I'm gonna invite Brad to come on up. Brad is, you'll be voting this month. No pressure, Brad, for Brad to be one of our one of our elders, but he's been trying on this gift of teaching, and he's in John 15 today.

And I got to see his outline, and it looks good. And I'd love to just pray for you, Brad, too, before before you speak. Lord, would you speak to us through your word? May we be listening. I think of a passage in Mark where you say, the closer that you pay attention, the closer you're listening, the more understanding that you'll be given.

And so, Lord, we pray that, would you tune our hearts to be listening, Lord, and that we would gain more understanding as we listen to hear from you. This is the this is God breathed here, Lord. May we be hearing what you have to say to us this morning. In Jesus'

name, amen. Amen. Morning, everyone.

Thanks for that introduction, Carl. There's going to be some participation from you, so go ahead and get used to it. But plenty of you have been wondering who the guest speaker was going to be because Ray is obviously not here there. So if we haven't met, my name is Brad Yates. We're going be covering John fifteen:five today.

That's my family. You can see Natalie there and the kids thankfully ran downstairs. I've had the privilege for the last year of being the editor of First Be in the Bible. If you're not on this, if you're not tired already of hearing the shameless plugs for it, you can take a picture of that QR code, and your phone will do some magic, and we'll help you we'll take you to a sign up page so that you can receive God's word in your inbox 05:00 every weekday morning. And it's just been an awesome blessing for me, and I think it will bless you as well.

So I've taught a few times on Monday nights, and I've had the privilege of doing a few weddings, but this is my first time speaking on a Sunday. So Pat Ullman, who you're going hear from in just a second, calls this my disclaimer. But just kind of a few key points before we kick off. Please give me feedback as we go, both like ongoing throughout, so like a smile, a nod. These things are, like, really helpful for for anybody that's teaching, but particularly for me.

And

then the other

thing that's been weighing really heavy on me is James three one this week. And this is where James says, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. So this is this is something that I'm incredibly excited about, but also there's a weight to it, if that makes sense. So as I mentioned, I would love your feedback afterwards. If you want to jot that down, if you don't already know how to get in contact with me, I would love to hear what worked for you, what blessed you.

If I just totally missed something and you want some clarification, that'd be great. Or, of course, you can always just bother Ray to get my contact information. Last point in this is just remember in all of this, I'm just one beggar telling another beggar where I found bread. So I tend to get excited about God's word. So if I get into, like, any hand waving or my voice picks up in cadence or things like that, I'm pretty much preaching to myself.

Like, these are things that we're going through today that have blessed me immensely. And so if shouting at you, I'm not shouting at you, I'm shouting at me. So I'm going to invite Patrick Almond up today to read our broad text so that you can take a break from hearing my voice. The yellow one.

All right. John fifteen:one-eight. I am the true vine. I am the true vine, and the Father is the wine dresser vine dresser. Every branch in me does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that does not that does bear fruit sorry, I butchered that whole thing. Let me start over. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does does bear fruit, he prunes. That in that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I've spoken to you.

Abide in me and I in you. And as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I got it. Okay. I am the vine.

You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like the branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

So setting a little bit of context here. We're in the middle of what's referred to as the farewell discourse or the upper room discourse. This is John 13 through 17. Jesus is gathered with his 12 disciples, and he's having the last supper. Judas has left the room already, to betray Jesus to his death with a conspiracy of religious rulers and the Roman leaders.

He makes some pretty bold claims in this. We're going to go back to John 14 here just for a minute to look at some key texts that he's made in the lead up to what we're going to cover today. And if you're new to the faith or you're just exploring, I just want to take a moment and say thank you for trusting us with your time and being here. I love this church. I think you'll find it to be a really healthy place to grow.

But these are four key texts that I would encourage all of us regardless of our maturity in Christ to wrestle with. In fourteen six, Jesus says, I'm the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. Truly and then few verses later, truly truly I say to you, the one who believes in me, the works that I do, he will do also. And greater works than these will he do because I'm going to the father.

And then in 15, he says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And then he closes in 26. He says, but the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said to you. So in those four verses, Jesus has made really clear that he is the only path to salvation, that the the expectation is that you will do the works that he does in bringing others to salvation. Third, that we will keep his commandments.

I know we don't like to talk about the idea of Jesus giving commandments, but he did. And fourth, he gives us the gives us the promise of the Holy Spirit that he will seal believers with the Holy Spirit so that we will be able to achieve the things that he has set out for us to do. So given that context, Jesus is now launching into a longer and more detailed analogy to unpack those deeper truths that he covered in 14, and that's what we're covering today. So for note takers, and I would encourage all of you to become eventually, not just for my benefits here, but our focus verse today, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing. So there's four key points that come right out of the text then. One, Jesus is the vine, not us. Two, abide. He in us and we in him.

Three, as branches, we are expected to bear fruit. And then fourth, Jesus kind of sums all that up and he says that apart from him, we can do nothing. Paul would say that our our righteousness is apart from Jesus is like filthy rags. So we'll go to our first point. Who is the vine?

It's Jesus. It's not you. It's not me. He says, I am the vine. You are the branches.

And as we're reading together as a church body in Genesis, in two fifteen, it's pretty obvious that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, not us. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it. We were created by God, for God, for the purpose of doing the work that he would have us do. But Adam did excuse me. I had a cold about a week and a half ago.

Thanks, Abby. And but Adam did what each of us continue to do. We we disobey God. We don't trust that God has our best interests at heart, and so we tend to kind of hedge our bets. And so we say, okay.

I'm gonna affirm the name of Jesus. I'm gonna claim the name of Jesus, but I'm gonna hold back 50%. I'm gonna hold back 10%. I'm gonna hold back 1% of my life. And as those of you in relationships know, if you're not fully known, you're not fully known.

So we don't get to hold back. So what we tend to do is we tend to either want to take a different role or we tend to disconnect ourselves from the vine altogether. Practically in our lives, that can look like a few different things. We can say, okay, God. I'll attend church, but I'm definitely not going to confess that sin or that temptation that's been eating me alive.

I'm afraid people will judge me. Or we say, okay, God. I'll acknowledge you quietly behind closed doors, but I'm not gonna share my faith because the world says that that makes me close minded and a bigot. Or we say, okay, God. I'll give some money to the church, but I'm gonna manage the rest of my resources in the way that the world says is wise, not in the way that that God does.

Or fourth, I'll say, okay, God. I'll acknowledge you in my heart, but I'm gonna do this on my own. It's just Jesus and me. I'm gonna be the lone ranger. I'm not gonna be united to the local bot local bride of Christ.

And like I said in Genesis three, this is this is basically what we read happened at the fall. The serpent convinced Eve that in spite of God allowing her to eat from any of the trees in the garden, it was this one, the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, that God must have been holding something back from Eve. We need to trust instead like David says in Psalm 16 that the boundary lines are set in pleasant places. Personally, this is a big part of my story. I held back for a really long time.

I was raised in Texas, and I I was Christian because I wasn't a communist. Like, we went we went to church every Sunday morning the same way that we went to football games on Friday night, and it had about the same effect on my soul. I didn't understand the gospel. I didn't understand its just radical claims on me and what and the implications for the rest of my life. And in case that's you, for any of you here, I just wanna take a second and kind of explain what we mean in church settings when we say the gospel.

The gospel is that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe, is perfect and is holy and is love, and that he created us out of nothing to do work for him. But that we, in our sinful nature, couldn't commune with God because we can't approach him, because we'll be destroyed by his holiness. But God had a plan for that all along. He took his perfect eternal son and he gave us that son. That son set aside his glory for a bit.

He took on flesh, and he lived the most humble life. And he lived a perfect life fulfilling all prophecy and all righteousness. And then for that, he died on the cross for our sins. He said to God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So that none of us will ever have to say those words.

Because God doesn't forsake us. And then on the third day, after his death, Jesus walked out of that grave. And he did that to show this was a divine conspiracy, that this had always been the plan. And out with that grave walked all of our shame, all of our guilt, anything that we need to hold back. We can identify 100% with Jesus.

That's what we mean when we say the gospel in church. And then if you will but believe that, you can have not only eternal life, but you can have a life here in this world, in this fallen world that is rooted in-depth and unshakable joy. Romans ten:nine puts it really well when it says, If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. James follows on in James two, and he says, What good is it my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?

He goes on to say, Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. And that's a good summary leading back to what we're talking to today. We'll compare that then with the ethos of today, which I think is is covered well by William Ernest Henley's poem Invictus. This is a famous line. We've heard it referenced pop culture many times.

I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. We hear this time and time again in the modern day. And even as a as a as a man standing here that spent the entire week studying the word to bring it to you guys, this is something that calls to me. This is the siren song.

It has always been true that this is our temptation, but it's never been more true now. Basically, every sociological study ever done says that the modern Western Hemisphere, and particularly the Western United States, is the most individualistic culture that's ever existed. And I'm saying that value neutral. Right? That's compared to like a a collectivist society.

We value the rights of the individual over and above the rights of the group. And that's great in a lot of ways. Please don't mishear me on that. E mail Ray on that. But look where it gets us.

Do a quick Google search. I don't even want need to bring up the the data on this. Look at what's happening with drug use, antidepressant use, deaths of despair. This individualism, this I am the captain of my soul, this is we are bearing out that fruit in society right now. And so you just need to know that these are the waters that we swim in.

That as we go about our lives, this is the gravitational pull that we experience. But let's be honest, we're terrible at it. Each year roughly forty percent of Americans set New Year's resolutions. Of those that set goals, twenty three percent quit in the first week. It's the eighth.

Sixty percent quit in the first month and ninety one percent don't make it through the year. So even when you sit down, this is then there's no external pressure on you to do this. You sit down of your own volition, and you have decades of experience within your own flesh, within your own motivations, you know what you're capable of, and there are no external barriers to success. Only forty percent of us make it through the first month. We're not very good captains or masters.

Now to be clear, I'm not dumping on New Year's resolutions. Like I think it's great to like reflect and think through all of that, but I just we are terrible captains. We are terrible masters. We are terrible vines. We are terrible vinedressers.

When we are the masters of our fate, every outcome in life feels like the sole determinant of our value, or we pin our perceived worth on the people and things around us. This is how we end up taking a good thing and making it ultimate, and the Bible calls that making it an idol. So whether it's your job, your investments, your house, your your family, gosh, your kids, your spouse, We take these good things to work on and we make them ultimate. We place the weight, I don't know if this will hold, but we place the weight of ourselves on something that's not designed to bear our weight. And it will fail us every single time.

There's also one relative newcomer to this that I didn't mention in the quick list, which is politics. And you guys can go ahead and get uncomfortable, but I've got the mic so we're gonna do this. Here's a fun test. Would you rather convert somebody to your politics or to your Christ? And if you're sure about that, let's do a quick temperature reading on that.

In the last couple of months, which of you spent more time and intentional discussion around? If you are spending well, let me say this. What about what's your reading? What's your what's your media consumption? Because if you're spending more time with Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow, wherever they are on the political spectrum, if you spend more time with them than you do with God's word and God's people, you're setting yourself up for failure.

And this has this this tendency towards individualism. This has broader implications for us as a church corporate as well. Our branch, this church at First B or the church in Jackson Hole or or or just the the modern church, we are irrevocably connected. Paul would call it grafted in Romans 11. We are grafted into God's plan of salvation for the world.

This means that the gospel truth we hold so dear, it is unchanging, and the church cannot drift towards complacency and call it love and acceptance. We cannot hew towards the culture in terms of compromising truth. It's been said for a long time that the church is God's plan a for working in the world and there is no plan b. God does not need us, but he wants to use us, and we should want to be used by him. Because as I covered earlier, it is our purpose to be branches to bear fruit.

So that gets us to abide. Whoever abides in me and I in him. What does it mean to abide? Well, this is my best Ray impersonation. I had to just bring up the Greek here.

But it's it's to continue to dwell, to endure, to be present, to remain, to stand, to tarry. It's it's the the connotation is of stillness and waiting, but it's like an active waiting, if that makes sense. Like it's Paul in first Corinthians 16 would say, stand firm in the faith. It's that same idea. It's I'm choosing to remain here.

And I, for one, can be so guilty of rushing through my quiet times, through not choosing not to do this, Not dedicating myself to stillness and prayer. I've got God, I've got work to do. I've got kids to raise. I've got ministry to work on. I've got adventures to squeeze in.

God, I've got a sermon to write. Right? Like, I've got stuff to do. But when I really dwell or root myself in the word, when I have those deep quiet times, and I allow stillness and contemplation for who God is and what work he's done in my life, I get just as much done. And here's the thing, I do it with joy, I do it with peace, and I do it for God.

Here's a very real example. I was so excited when Ray and Carl asked me to teach today. They had barely finished the sentence, and I was already thinking through like, okay. What am I gonna bring to God's people? But if I don't have my quiet time before I prepare this message, if I don't pray humbly sitting in that seat right there before I walk up on this stage, I'm probably preaching in sin because I'm doing it for my own purposes and not for the kingdom of God.

So there's a confession here. I really want you guys to like me. I'm serious. I want you guys to think that I'm articulate, and then I'm clever, and then I'm handsome, and then I'm like I'm like I'm like John Calvin and John Wayne and JFK. Like I I just you know, like with a beard and a plaid shirt up on stage.

And but this is my first time doing this and I want another shot at it. And I'm not asking for that. I'm just being honest with my heart in this. That if I don't abide even in this moment while I'm teaching, I'm probably not producing the fruit that God would have me produce. Does that make sense?

Simply, what does it mean to abide? It means to root yourself in Jesus, not just once, not just weekly, and not even just once during the day, but every single day and often throughout the day. What does that look like? The Bible has tons of stuff, but thankfully you've got me to boil it down for you. We'll call it reading and prayer, worship, confession, discussion, and meditation.

So as an acronym, that's And but I I wanna call these the disciplines of desire, if that makes sense. That's borrowing a phrase from Tim Keller. And and I would just summarize these as anything that increases your view of God and decreases your view of yourself. And and and so it's not in the I stink sort of way, but just taking the focus of your vision off of yourself and fixing it on Christ. So it I've I've heard it said, it's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

And it's a little campy, but because it, you know, is catchy, hopefully, you'll take that with you. Almost every single one of these things can be done both formally and informally. So we can think of this as like meals and snacks. We can and should have regular dedicated quiet times with the Lord where we accomplish most of these things. But we can also go throughout our day and and and have little snacks.

But if you try to live on the snacks, you'll you'll survive, but you won't thrive. So prayer can be long form. It can be driven by a prayer sheet, which is a discipline that somebody shared with me a decade ago, and I've benefited from greatly. If anybody wants my prayer sheet, I'll send it to you. If your name's on there, I hope it blessed you.

But, like, also prayer can be throughout the day. I have a as an example, I have a a friend of mine who's at another church. When he found out that my mom had cancer a couple years ago, he decided that he was going to pray for my mom and Sonny every single time he saw a Texas license plate. And think about how redeeming that is in this town for what our view of Texas license plates, and I'm from Texas. But but and and speaking of mom, by the way, we got some good news last week.

She's still fighting cancer. She's back in Dallas. Her tumor shrunk like 20 or 25% in the last few months, and we don't really know why. And so we're just pumped on that. Hi, mom.

Hi, Sunny. They're watching from home. But we're hoping to get them here full time soon. So the same idea for that for prayer can be said of reading, worship, confession, discussion, whatever it is. My community group is here, and I I text those guys, and I'm just like, hey, like, here's something I'm praying for you about.

Here's something I'm thinking about. Here's something that's eaten my lunch. So what's a tangible first step for abiding if you're not doing this? Talk to God, talk to others. Ask them.

Be like, hey, how can I become more mature, more useful for Christ for the kingdom today? What discipline are you not seeing in my life that you think I would benefit from? So I know, don't jingle your car keys at me. I'm gonna get there. So the idea then is we use all of this to change our hearts and then we go to bear fruit.

So here it is that bears much fruit. This is the so what portion for today. Bearing fruit is is in many ways pretty obvious. The general idea here is like a bringing forth is a tree, like bringing forth or germinating. And I know there are some here that have tended animals before, but there's not a lot of orchards around, so we're going to do a quick ag quiz.

What kind of fruit does an apple tree produce? Apples. Good. What kind of fruit does a a fig tree produce? Figs.

So what kind of fruit would a righteous tree produce? Righteousness. That's and that's the idea. As we become more like Christ in our hearts, the natural outpouring of our hearts will be Christ likeness. So Paul defines this helpfully in Galatians five twenty two.

Fruit of the spirit, we've all heard this. In fact, let's do this together, class. Start with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

I did the hands.

And and then he also summarizes that even further in first Corinthians 11. He says, what do you do with that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, self control? You become imitators of Paul as Paul is an imitator of Christ. So Paul took his Christ likeness, and he changed the world forever. He he grew the kingdom of God, and we're to do the same thing.

We take our Christ likeness that we grow through those disciplines of desire, and then we go forth and we change the world. And what does this look like practically for us? It means every aspect of our lives should be changed. When you give yourself to Christ, everybody around you should see a difference between who you are now and who you were then, and then you should also be different from the culture around us. If you give your life to Christ and you hold anything back, like I mentioned earlier, you're also missing out on the full measure of blessing that's available to you.

And I don't mean that from like a prosperity gospel material standpoint. I mean that from like the deep seated joy that is unshakable regardless of circumstances. Oddly enough, being crucified with Christ brings a joy. I have been crucified with Christ, Paul says in Galatians two. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Paul wrote most of his letters from jail, and you read them and not knowing that context, and they read like he's at he's at Walt Disney World or something. Like, he's in the park. I I've I've read it all summarized very well when it says, I'm not yet who I want to be, but thank God I'm not who I was. So once you were changed, your affections will change. And then you're gonna see the needs in the body that you're able to meet, and You're going to want to meet them.

You're going to have a desire that if you've percolated well, you can't help but go forward and do it. Let me be very clear, we should be doing something. And that's not just sitting in a pew and writing a check. We should all be getting to work for the kingdom. So if you've been running with Jesus for a while and you don't have some mechanism where you're actively bearing fruit, I'm not saying that you're not a Christian.

But what I'm saying is, you may have forgotten the radical nature of who you were before Christ and what you've been saved from. Or as Jesus would say through John in Revelation two, he would say that you have abandoned the love you have at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. And this is not a scare tactic. Like, I I hesitated to put that in there.

This is not hellfire and brimstone. This is purely a reminder that Jesus Christ, eternally one with the father, set aside his eternal glory, that God gave his son for you. And I love this church. I love each and every one of you. It's part of the reason why we've just dived right in is because of the love that this church has.

But I'm not giving my son for you. I'm not. But God did. And that should shake us every day. So there's some easy ways to bear fruit in case you're looking for suggestions.

Now again, I hesitated to put this up because I don't want to say it's not a list, it's not a list, and it's not a list, and then be like list. But like sometimes we need that help taking that first step. And so just to pick some out here so that, like I said, you guys aren't jingling keys at me. Is is it if you're an evangelist, be an evangelist. If you wanna serve, there are so many places in this church that will serve.

If you are wired for hospitality, if you have if you're a great cook, if you have a beautiful home, if you like having people around your table, have people around the table. But tell them why you're doing it. Start a small group, whether that's Bible study, accountability, prayer, gosh, we need dedicated prayer in this valley. Parachurch ministries, I know Allie's here. Give it a wave.

Young Life, Samaritan Mission, Turning Point, all of these have representation of Christ to the culture, or we can start in discipleship. So before I leave this slide, what I want to remind you again is that the core of our faith is that we are not saved by bearing fruit. But if we are a healthy branch, we cannot help but bear fruit. Does that make sense to everybody? Give me a nod or I'm going to keep going.

I mean, snow is not that great. Jesus also He summarized all of this. He says, apart from me, you can do nothing. We abide in Jesus. Our heart is changed, and then we get to doing the work of the gospel.

So just to give it to you one more time, I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing. I'm gonna come back to that one. Thank you so much, church, for allowing me to be up here.

As of I wanna have the band come back up, but I just that was heavy. That was heavy for me to write. That was heavy for me to say, and I'm sure it was heavy to hear. I wanna remind you of the the grace that's in Romans eight one as they start to play. Therefore, there is now no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Be in Christ Jesus, then there's no condemnation, then we do the work. Thank you. You

would you stand stand with us

and we'll sing sing a song. This is a good word from from Luke. Jesus says, don't be afraid, little flock. Gives your father great happiness to give you the kingdom.

All throughout my Your faithfulness is alongside me. The windstorms made a way for spring. Every season from where I'm standing, I see the uninsurly goodness all over my life, see your promises in the building, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave. See the cross, the Yeah.

That ends his end. All my sin all the way because of you, Lord Jesus.

Lord, thank you for the evidence that you show in our life. Holy Spirit, would you be working on us throughout the work the week, working this message in us that that you are the vine and that we are the branches. And as we remain in you and you and us, we will bear fruit. Lord, that we would be fruit bearers and representatives, good representatives of you, carrying with us, God, your spirit, your light, your love. God, that the world truly would see you through the church.

Use us as imperfect as we are, and we are definitely imperfect. But as Brad said earlier, one beggar telling another beggar where bread could be found. May that be our story. In Jesus' name. Amen.