November 17, 2017 Passion Fruit John 15:1-8 Jesus says: Follow me into passion by staying closely connected to me. Passion. What comes to mind when I say this word, “passion?” What you love, sensual desire, golf, etc… All kinds of things, right? What you’re passionate about will largely determine your life’s direction so it is really important for us to zero in on this concept. What is passion and how we do cultivate it. Today I’d like to get back into our fall series on (LCD) “Being Disciples, Making Disciples. We’re seeking to unpack our tag line as a church, “Following Jesus together… wherever He leads.” A few weeks back we saw that Jesus said that we can’t be His disciple unless we deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Him. Discipleship requires total commitment. Today I’d like us to look at another aspect of discipleship – the passion behind it. To do that, I want to take us to the gospel of John, the 15th chapter. In this chapter, Jesus is with His disciples in the Upper Room on the night before He is going to suffer and be crucify. The air is thick with concern. Jesus tells them that he is leaving and they can’t follow, that someone’s going to betray Jesus, that Peter, the strong one, is going to deny Him three times. Wow. And with that, at the end of chapter 14, Jesus says, “Come now, let us leave.” Where are they going? Right, to the Garden of Gethsemane – which means ‘olive press’ – Jesus is going into a garden where He is going to be pressed like no human being has ever or ever will be pressed. Life sucked right out of Him as He submits to the Father’s will. He’ll then go through a series of unjust trials -without defending Himself, be beaten and tortured by Roman soldiers, spit upon and laughed at by the ones He’s going to die for, and finally experience the horror show of Roman crucifixion. “Come now, let us leave.” Indeed. Jesus and His disciples walk into the cold, black night in more ways than one. All of these events are called the passion of the Christ. Why do we call it passion? Take a look at this (LCD), the word passion comes from the 12th century and it is derived from the Latin word ‘passus’ which means to endure, to suffer, to submit. The ultimate suffering, the ultimate submission in human history was that of Jesus Christ. He became sin, was unjustly punished, to bring us to God. Passion. What does passion look like? Picture Jesus and the disciples making their way down a stone staircase onto the streets of Jerusalem on their way to the garden of suffering. As they make their way through winding alleys and streets, Jesus begins to teach them about how they can follow in His passionate footsteps. John 15: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” In these verses, we’re going to read about disciples who bear no fruit, disciples who bear some fruit and disciples who bear much fruit – what I’ll call passion fruit. Of course we want to be found in the last category and that requires several factors. Which one are you? What is this fruit that we bear as disciples and how can we be more fruitful? It’s all about passion – voluntary submission and focus - as we’ll see. First of all, as they walk along the streets of Jerusalem, they probably walk by (LCD) Herod’s temple with a golden vine wrapped around it. Perhaps Jesus pointed to it when He said, “I am the true vine.” Why a vine? The vine was the national symbol of Israel much like the Charter Oak is for Connecticut or the eagle is for the USA. The (LCD) national coinage had a vine and grape clusters on it as seen in these first century coins from Jesus’ day. Vineyards were everywhere and they symbolized success, blessing and prosperity. But more than simply a national symbol, in the Old Testament, one of the most common images used to describe Israel’s destiny as God’s chosen people, is that of a vine or a vineyard. It’s everywhere. Israel is supposed to be the bearer of God’s image, of God’s greatness to the world. She is supposed to be the channel of blessing to the world; but that isn’t the case. Bible scholar George Beasley-Murray notes, (LCD), “It is striking that in every instance when Israel in its historical life is depicted in the OT as a vine or vineyard, the nation is set under the judgment of God for its corruption, sometimes explicitly for its failure to produce good fruit.” How sad. Here is just one of many of those instances (LCD), “I had planted you like a choice vine of sound and reliable stock. How then did you turn against me into a corrupt, wild vine?” So when Jesus uses one of His famous “I Am” statements to call Himself the ‘true vine’ – He is saying that He is succeeding where Israel failed. He is “reliable and true” while Israel wasn’t. He is bearing the beauty of God to the nations through His joyful submission to the Father, His passion. The last thing that Jesus says in chapter 14 before they left the upper room, look up at verse 31 in chapter 14: “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” Jesus bears the beauty of God before the whole world by obeying His Father – that’s His passion – a willingness to submit to the Father’s will in order to please Him and show His goodness to the world. Let me ask you this morning, ‘Do you have passion for the Father?’ Are you submitting to Him in order to bear good fruit for Him? Next, Jesus says that the Father is the gardener or the vinedresser. He works meticulously in order that this true, good vine will be as productive as possible. He does this by doing two things. First, he cuts off unproductive branches and, secondly, He prunes productive ones. Now these two words are instructive here. The first one (LCD), airo, has two main meanings: to lift up and to remove or cut away. Two very different ideas. Some commentators think that we should read it as lift up – that the Father comes along and lifts up the vines trailing on the ground in order to clean them off and put them back on the trellis. I love that but the context later in verse 6 seems to indicate cutting off more than rehabilitation. Most likely this is referring to the cutting of deadwood to give the good branches room to grow and bear more fruit. Those who bear no fruit are removed. We’ll talk more about this later when we get to verse 6. The second word (LCD) katairo, which means to cleanse or cleanse by pruning which probably refers to the winter when the branches were cut back to make them more productive come spring. The result isn’t very pretty (LCD), but it is necessary to produce more fruit. These are branches that produce some fruit but could bear more. The road to bearing more fruit means painful pruning. If we want more fruit, we’re going to have to endure a season of pruning. Are you experiencing the Father’s pruning or discipline in your life? When I became a believer at the University of New Hampshire, one of my big early issues was girlfriends! There was this girl in my dorm that I liked, Ginette, but there was a problem…she was dating someone and, oh yeah, she was not a follower of Christ. I really wanted to go out with her but knew it probably wasn’t the best idea for my Christian growth. Well, the semester went on and I started growing pretty fast – bearing some fruit but not much just yet. Then I got an opportunity to go to UMass in order to prepare for a summer discipleship program. Right before that trip, I found out Ginette was available again! Woah! We had a dorm dance scheduled on Saturday night and I was supposed to be back on Friday so I asked Ginette, against my better judgment, to go and she said ‘Yes’! Sweet! I can have God and my girl! Psych! Well, one thing after another occurred down at UMass…car breakdowns in the middle of nowhere, missed rides… eventually we were forced to hitch-hike back to New Hampshire! We finally got back, in tatters, 30 minutes after the bus had left for the dance! I was so mad…at God! What’s up! Can’t believe it.