Come To Me | I Am The Vine

We're gonna be in John chapter 15, verse one through 17. Jesus says this, I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. 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. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 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. 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. 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. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. This is to my father's glory that you may bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friend. You are my friends if you love, if you do what I command. No longer, I no longer call you servants because my father does not know, because I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his father's business. Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I learned from my father, I have now made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask in my name, the father will give you. This is my command, love one another. This is the word of the Lord. Well, a very good morning to you. Just one minute on Living the Liturgy before we jump in. We are right at the same point we were last year. This is our last week for Living the Liturgy. That puts us in a wonderful opportunity this week to live by faith. Just doing like a little bit of rough maths. And it's simply this, if every person in our church gave $500, we'd close this out this week. So if you're sitting there thinking, for some of you, $500 may be like the greatest sacrifice

of your life. For some of you, that's drinks, that's happy hour for the month. Everyone's in a different space, but I would simply say, if our whole church did this, we would close this out, be fully resourced. I say that to say, don't think that small sacrificial gifts do not change the culture and outcome of what God does in our church. So put that before you this week. Please be prayerful. We'll be moving on and getting on with the year. I wanna make sure that you get a chance to participate in what God's doing. Amen. I think, changing gears now, here begins the sermon. I think most people are walking around, followers of Jesus are walking around in the city these days with one burning question in their heart. Okay, here's what that question is. Is it possible to pour myself out without burning out? We watch so many people, maybe naively, maybe with untempered zeal, just give themselves and they just burn out. And so a lot of times, when we see that, we have a kind of self-preservation instinct where we're always just worried. We're never fully giving ourselves because we're always worried.

If we give too much, we may burn out. And I understand that. I feel those sorts of pressures as well. But I think that Jesus wants to answer that question today with a yes. I believe Jesus claims, in the passage we're gonna look at today, that it is possible to pour out your life for what matters without burning out. So let's look at how he claims this is possible. Jesus' core claim we're looking at today, I am the true vine. This is Jesus' core claim. This is Jesus' claim, I'm the true vine. Now, I wanna make sure you feel the weight of this claim. Jesus, claiming with the ego I am, the I am component of the claim, says that he is God in the flesh. Like people are always wondering, is there someone behind the whole universe? How did it get here? Why is there something instead of nothing? If there was a God, how would he reveal himself? Christians are making the claim, Jesus is the created God, come into the world to show us what God's like, and in human flesh, Jesus rightly points to himself as the source of spiritual life, passion, growth, and productivity. What a claim.

Jesus says, life, vitality, passion, growth, productivity, all come from being connected to me. So I wanna make sure you get this super clear, summarize those 17 verses in four quick statements. The vine is Jesus, the branches are us, the father is the vinedresser, and the goal of all of this is that fruit will come. Just one note about fruit, the point of fruit is not fruit. Fruit is always for others, otherwise what happens? It rots on the vine. The goal is to produce fruit in such a way that will be given to others. Jesus says the way that happens is that he is the vine, we stay connected to him, the father is the one who cares about what happens in our life, and that if we do that, fruit will come to bless other people. Now, this is a huge claim. I wanna give you the context of it because there's way more happening here. Jesus' claim is, it's almost preposterous that a human being would say that this is possible from a relationship with him, and I want you to see why it was such a shock in the Bible. Remind you of the context. Jesus, this is in what's called the Upper Room Discourse. Half of the Gospel of John, almost half of the Gospel of John, is the stuff Jesus said before he went to the cross in the Upper Room with his disciples,

called the Upper Room Discourse. And Jesus is wanting the disciples to understand who he is and what he is offering through his life and his death. It's also interesting to note that Jesus has been teaching in the temple, and if you were to go in, if you're in the first century and you're in Jerusalem and you were gonna go up to the temple, which was the central place of worship for the people of God, they had a huge gate that you would walk through to get there. And woven into the gate, craftsmen had created this beautiful, elaborate vine producing fruit. And it was a reminder every time you walked into the temple, we're God's people, we're the ones that produce the fruit of God's kingdom. So this is quite an extraordinary claim. When Jesus says that he's the vine, the word vine, this would have been a word that got everybody's attention. Ancient Israel, the covenant people of God, were the ones who were called the vine. The Old Testament establishes Israel as God's chosen people, they are the vine. He uses this as a metaphor for his relationship with them. God, the Father, picks the children of Israel to be relationally connected to him so that through their life together, fruit would come and they would heal and bless the world as a community. This was always God's heart. Scripture tells us in Psalm 80 verse eight

that God planted them himself. Israel, the nation of Israel, it's not a sociological or historical accident, they're not just one of many ancient nomadic tribes that emerged into a people group. God secured them and planted them as his people. And in Jeremiah 221, God has high expectations of the fruit that will come through his covenant relationship with these people. But the great tragedy, it doesn't go how God wants. In the Song of the Vineyard, which is in Isaiah 5, one through seven, Yahweh clears the land, plants the vine, but it only bears wild grapes. And this is the disobedience of the children of Israel who don't be faithful, they're not faithful to what God wants. He calls them a degenerate vine. Quite strong language by God to his people. Jeremiah 221, God sort of laments, I planted you a choice vine. How have you turned yourself before me into a degenerate shoot of a foreign vine? In Psalm 88 through 16, they're called a burnt vine in Hosea 10. God rebukes them because Israel is using their power and their connection to God, but instead of bearing godly fruit, they get sucked into idolatry. So all of their energy and all of their momentum produces idols.

So you can imagine when Jesus comes along and he says, hey, children of Israel, you're the unfaithful, bad fruit bearing false vine. God's going to replace your unique relationship with Him with a new and unique relationship with me, a single person. And I, as a man, will replace your old covenant and your way of thinking, and now you're going to relate to God through me. What a claim. So this is what he says. The source of God's blessing has shifted from national identity in Israel to spiritual union with Jesus Christ, who is the true vine. Now faith in Jesus is not characterized by ethnicity anymore. It is characterized by union with Christ. It is saying yes to Him that we now have access to the love, joy, and peace of God's heart. So next slide here to summarize it. For the Jewish view, symbolism, Israel was an unfaithful vineyard, abiding meant covenant loyalty to the Torah, fruit was justice and righteousness, pruning was God's divine judgment on them, and the outcome was restoration and hope. But in the Christian view, vine, the vine symbolism is Jesus is the faithful fulfillment. He got right while the children of Israel got wrong. In abiding, we are in a relationship with Him that produces love, obedience, and the fruit of the Spirit. Pruning is about God's loving discipline, and the outcome is eternal security and joy in God's presence. Andreas J. Kossenberger says this, theologically, John's point is that Jesus displaces Israel as the focus of God's plan of salvation, with the implication that faith in Jesus becomes the decisive characteristic for membership of God amongst God's people. That doesn't mean that the Jewish people or community don't matter anymore. It just means that salvation no longer comes through the old covenant or through ethnic identity.

It now comes by union with Christ, who is the Messiah. This is wild. So, let's recap these very quickly on one page, so you get the whole idea. Verse one through three, Jesus is I'm the true vine, He is contrasting with Israel's unfruitful vine in the Old Testament. The Father prunes faithful branches for more yield and removes unfruitful ones. Then Jesus' emphasis is on abiding. Branches must remain connected to bear fruit apart from Christ. Nothing is possible, but fruit glorifies God and proves our discipleship. In verses nine through 17, it's about how abiding extends to love. We keep the commands as Jesus kept the Father's commands, and this yields joy, answer, prayer, and mutual friendship in Christ. Do you see the meta level of the claim? It's like Jesus goes, see all that? Me now. See all that? They go, me now. And everything that you thought you'd get through that, that comes through me. This is a huge claim. Really to understand what Jesus is talking about is coming down to just a couple of things. The first one is this, is understanding what He means by abiding in Him. In the Old Covenant, that meant Torah obedience. This was like faithful to the laws as God had prescribed them in His covenant. But Jesus changes this. Yes, He says we have to obey Him, but for Him now abiding is about remaining in His love. How many of you have a crystal clear view of what abiding is? Got it all sorted out? It's like one of the most abused and overused Christian words that no one actually knows what it really means. If you were to say to someone, hey, how are you doing, they're like, oh, great, man.

I was just abiding this morning. Divine vibes. I mean, I just, abiding. You say, what were you doing in thou abidest? What was taking place in your abiding? Oh, man, it's too sacred to put into words. It's one of those things no one knows what they mean when they say abiding. Abiding is keeping and remaining in the love connection with Jesus. Let me illustrate. I've been married for 27 years, 28 years this year, okay, real time in the game. Don't need a clap. Clap for 30, okay, 28, it's just another year of love. But my simple point is, when I fell in love with my wife, we were just, I mean, smitten, intoxicated, drunk on love. I mean, just crazy. Then we got engaged, and I stayed in Georgia working on the campus. My wife moved to Florida where her parents were, okay? Now we are not physically together, but my entire heart orientation was for the girl who would soon be my wife. Now I'm up in the mountains of northeast Georgia. Okay, I'm 21, I'm working on campus. There was a few little Southern Bells floating around, okay? And they were like, yo, JT, I've never met an Australian. Would you like to go to the rodeo? I don't know, I don't know, would you, whatever. And I was like, hey, I appreciate the interest. My heart is so caught up and remaining with another woman called Christy Keepe, who was down in Kissimmee, Florida, okay? So even though we're not physically together,

we're not just like holding hands all day, okay? But my heart is connected to it, nothing can sever that. What Jesus is saying is not that you have to be a monk and retreat and you don't have a real job and real life and pressure and responsibilities, but the inner orientation of your life is connected to Jesus' secure love. If you go see a therapist, perhaps they'll talk about attachment theory, and they'll talk about having a secure attachment, which means your ability, that there is someone who is safe and consistent with whom you go to and you are received and find life, abiding. Now, abiding results in three things, okay? First, it gives us a source that we draw from. Power comes through that connection and it produces fruit in our life. Connected to Jesus' love, everyone's got that source of love. Power comes from that, I'm drawing on that love, and it shows up in New York in real time in my life. Now, that's really important because I think in the Christian tradition, there were so many distortions of our faith that are not abiding, okay? Here's one distortion I think very common. It's about doing more. We think more life comes from doing more things from God.

You look at the Pharisees, they were busy. I mean, they were doing all the stuff, and yet all of their performance led to their distortion, not their formation. It's not about doing more for God, it's about strategic elimination. It's actually about removing the things that are clogging up or getting in the way of you accessing John 15, nine. As the fathers loved me, so I've loved you. What? As the fathers loved me, so I've loved you. Now remain in my love. Which part of that says do more for God? No part of it. Which shows that we're not truly connected to the source and so we're trying to attach to religious activity to derive spirituality from it. Here's what Andrew Murray says. Abiding in Him is not a work that we have to do as a condition in order to enjoy His salvation. Rather, it is our consent to let Him do everything for us, in us, and through us. It is about surrendering to love, not getting God to love you because you're good. How freeing. Ephesians 1, three says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms

with every spiritual blessing in Christ. There's not multiple versions of the gospel. You get it all when you say yes to Jesus. Imagine, so, Christy, I love her, we get married, have this beautiful wedding in Newport, Ritchie, Florida. Great. Sign our wedding certificate, say our vows. Incredible, so good. Go on a cruise called the Big Red Boat for our honeymoon. You do you. Someone bought it for us, receive that. I want you to imagine as we're going through our life, every time I wanna make a decision, I just say, hey, before I talk to you about this, I just wanna go back and get our wedding vows out. I just wanna ask if this is covered. Can we do that? Yeah, we can do that, why? Because we're married. I just wanna check if that's included in our whole life covenant, one flesh union. Which part of whole life covenant, one flesh union makes you think this is excluded? We're in this together. That's what happens when you are. United with Christ, you get everything. Your faith is about actualizing and receiving what's yours, not performing or trying to get something as a favor from the sky daddy. It's yours, it's yours.

The goal of abiding is to bring what's in the eternal count into your current account through love so that you can follow God. Sinclair Ferguson says this, when we get Christ by faith, we get everything that is in him to pardon, liberate and transform our lives. First mistake, thinking you gotta do more. Second one, chasing experience versus cultivating connection. Listen, I can't be honest with you here. I'm a little guilty of this, okay. I got some Pentecostal revival fever in my spirit, can't get it out, don't even wanna get it out, but I love a good experience. I love a new book. I love an Instagram pastor rising from the ashes on one minute reels. I love a conference. I love an outpouring. I love getting in this under the spout where the glory is coming out. Sam Gibson says, if it's popping off, I'm popping in. I love that, okay. But so often we do that because we're afraid of being still before God because we can be terrified of intimacy, terrified of getting hurt, terrified of getting disappointed, don't know how to get past our boredom.

Look what Jesus says, remain in me as I also remain in you. Jesus is like, what do you want from me? And it's like, I want to grow the connection in our love. And so sometimes chasing all the other things are substitutes for the quiet, patient cultivation of intimate love with God. That could be the hardest thing. Now, not only are there distortions in the church about this, about abiding, but there's confusion and distortion in the world around us about how to get a spiritual source and how to get power and how to get the freedom we want. And I want to tell you, people are out there, people are open to anything because they are desperate for something to connect to, the power to make their lives work and then hopefully the fruit of whatever that is being manifest through their life. And I understand this. We all have to wrestle and explain how the universe got here, why human beings are seemingly valuable, why love and beauty exist and matter, where justice comes from. We'll have to ask the question, is history just like the meaningless, is it time, chance and matter, the strong defeating the weak and now we should all get along?

Everybody has to wrestle with life itself, human beings and what is happening in history. I get it. But when you look at people in the world who have really wrestled with this, just like to call back from last week, it's dark out there. Albert Camus, he talked about how we live in a world that's just absurd. It's absurd what's happening out there and without any sort of overarching framework of faith or meaning, some sort of coherent metanarrative, life at best is constant defiance against a meaningless existence. And you know that story of the God who was condemned to push the rock up the hill? He says, you really gotta find meaning in doing that. It's meaningless. You just gotta defiantly find meaning. I was like, you can do that for a bit because you can do anything like that when you're young for a bit. But to do that over time and everyone's like telling you it's good when you're just like, I don't think it's that good. John Pulsace, existentialist philosopher, talked about how we are condemned to be free, which means we're forced to create the essence of our own meaning from nothing.

And that sounds good, but have you ever walked into Whole Foods, right? You've walked into Whole Foods and you walk in there and I was in there yesterday getting ready for the blizzard. And I walked in yesterday and I was like, my wife wants yogurt. And there's about 19,000 options of yogurt. And I love the idea. landing stuff, but where is it? This wall of cultured milk goods. There's so much happening. Well someone just says, well pick what you want, but like what if you have to do that in every area of your life? What if you have to make up your own sexual ethics, make up your own meaning, your own philosophy of money, your own philosophy of justice, how you treat people, what international law should be, which music is the best? I mean like it's great at first and then you just get overwhelmed. Heidegger talked about this idea of what he called throne-ness and I think a lot of people feel the weight of this. It's the human condition of being cast into an existence without choice and yet still bearing the full responsibility for a life that you never asked to have. I think a lot of young folks feel that, like I didn't choose to be here man and now I've got to do all this stuff and it could be overwhelming. There's a lot more. Viktor Frankl and logotherapy, as long as it's meaningful, impute meaning. Well that's great but what if suffering is meaningless and you've imputed everything and it still doesn't work? We're told by the world just be your authentic self, like that's good for three minutes and they're like, what if your authentic self sucks? What if you hate your authentic self? This is my authentic self and I'm asking for change, you know what I mean? You've got the burdened activist, this is the person who's like, I'm the only one who really understands what's wrong with the world. Then you get people who are just numb and lost and so what ends up happening when you get rid of Jesus' claim is that instead of going to a true vine, you go to a false vine and we see this all the time. New York is like the false vine capital of the world. Everyone needs a source of meaning, love and value. Everyone needs power, you can call it whatever you want, energy or vision and everyone hopes for an outcome in their life.

But you get severed from the source, it won't last no matter how good it is. Ever seen a beautiful vase of flowers? Valentine's Day, I hope you saw some. Beautiful vase of flowers, you're just like, wow, like nine days later you're like, not wow. Beautiful, but because it's severed from the source, even with a little bit of water, the best it will do is slowly die. And New York is a city of beautiful, thoughtful, well-educated, wonderful people, severed from the source of divine life, trying to put little bits of water to keep the leaves from wilting and dying, but dying slowly. False vines, you think you just meet the right person, it will fix everything? If only it was that simple. Get enough success, get that recognition you believe you always deserve, get enough attention, just like, look at me, look at me. So much of our quest for attention is just like a four-year-old kid at the park with a parent on the phone. She'd be like, mommy, mommy, and they're like, peer recognition, financial security, if I could just get 10 million in a bank and live off the interest, I got this, life will be great. Self-care, the wellness industrial complex, you're worthy, breathe out. Now you may be worthy, and I do breath work, you can probably tell, huge lung capacity. Sometimes it's power, just being in control, maybe you've certainly had very little agency growing up, and if like, if I can just maintain power over people, sometimes it's beauty. The whole thing is, if you pull, and again, these things seem like anecdotal and obvious, but the actual lived experience of trusting in this thing, and trying to extract everything, and then getting it, and it not working, is so disillusioning. Remember this, your life will bear the fruit of whatever you abide in, Christian or not. Abide in bitterness, the fruit of bitterness will come out. Whatever it is that you abide in, your life will bear the fruit of it. And into all this chaos and despair, Jesus says, I am the true vine, as the fathers loved me, so have I. I mean, Jesus is saying, that you were loved by him, like he is loved by the father. Have you really come to terms with that? Have you really come to terms about the affectionate heart of God? you? Have you really come to terms with what this means? Because your life will bear the fruit of whatever you abide in. Here's what this means, to become a person of love, you must remain in His love. To become a person of love, you must remain in His love. Your life will bear the fruit of whatever you abide in, and if you abide in His love, you will become a person of His love.

Let's push down on this just a couple layers deeper. What does that mean? What does that look like? Here's what it looks like. You shift from being a servant of God to being a friend of Jesus. What? Listen. Listen. Muslims think Christians are wrong. Jehovah's Witnesses think that Muslims are wrong. Mormons think Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. Buddhists think there's no personal God anyway. Hinduism holds to millions of gods. Here's my simple point. Every religion believes they're right and other people are wrong, and you not wanting a religion is a religion. What you're saying is, I'm not comfortable with disagreement, therefore I want to control the world in such a way that we all get along. My simple point is, you can't avoid truth claims, right? Now, Jesus is making a truth claim here, but I want you to know, Muhammad never says, follow me and I'll be your friend. Joseph Smith never said, follow me and I'll be your friend. Buddha never says, come to me and I'll be your friend. Here's what Jesus says, I call you friend. Friends with God. What? Do you know how great friends are? God, we get. Worship and awe. Lord, we get. Servants of God feels reverent. And then Jesus comes along and puts a wrecking ball of intimacy through our paradigm and says, I no longer call you servants. Because the servant doesn't know his master's business. Instead, I've called you friends for everything I learned from my father, I've made known to you. Father, I've made known to you. How's your friendship with Jesus going? You know what I do with my friends? Laugh, eat, enjoy, cry-ish, cry a bit, sort of cry a bit, at least tear up. Express emotion, how's that? Express emotion. Have fun. Have fun. How's your friendship with Jesus going? Got to get out of the religious posture of being a servant of God. Because abiding, Jesus says, makes you my friend. The Greek word Jesus uses here for friendship means intimate. In the ancient world, there was no category that you take the slave and put them at your table and you become mates. What is this teaching and who is this man that offers this to people? Here's what else you get when you abide, you get a sense of value. Greater love is no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. Here's what Jesus says, you've got a problem you can't fix on your own. You've got a condition that results in death. But I love you so much that I would die in your place and you can have my life.

What? You matter so much that Jesus is like, my life, for your life, you're worth it to me. It also, when you're connected to this, it transforms who you are. You become like your friends, you know that? It transforms you. And it's not like gritting your teeth. You're not with your friends going, I must be like you. It doesn't work like that, it just happens over time. You take on the mannerisms, you shift your values. Remember my sermon a couple months ago on, your values are built on what you identify by, not the other way around. Like all the social research says, you think objectively, you choose your values and then you align with people who are like them. No, no, no, no, no. You choose your friends and then you take their values on board. Don't believe it? How many of you changed your opinion on a significant cultural issue since living in New York? Call it education, I call it new friends, okay? Look at this image of the fruit. It's so true, but these grapes aren't like, dang it, be a great grape. Come on man, let's tell him, let's tell Huberman he was wrong on alcohol. We've got antioxidants in here, baby. They're not doing that. It's funny because when I get compliments, or like when people are kind or they want to encourage me, however you put it, about things they see in my life that are like Jesus, these are rarely things that I am aware of are like Jesus in my life. If they were like, bro, you're so intense pursuing this, I'd be like, thank you. A little bit of the flesh in that, maybe a little self-righteousness. When people say stuff like, I'm like, gosh, I had no idea that was happening in my life, because fruit is effortless when it's connected to the source, it just happens. And Jesus does all this, here's what he says, because he wants us to have complete joy. How's your joy? I've told you this. He's talking to them about abiding and being the vine and all of that.

He says that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. It gets better, he says this. You did not choose me, but I chose you. Do you know what it is to be wanted by Jesus? How much of adult life is just kids in the third grade who are picked last in kickball, honestly? You're like, ha, ha, ha, go see a therapist and they'll start working through your family of origin and early traumatized stuff. When's the first time you truly felt rejected? Like, it was the third grade, I was in kickball and I was like, dear God, don't let me be last, I was last. And ever since then, I've had this internal need for recognition, deeper than you think. So many grown men succeeding in New York are just small children who dad never said I love you to. Listen, this is true. All you have to do is be in the people business where you hear people share their hearts. Here's what Jesus says. You didn't choose me, I chose you. He wants you. You know, the creator of the universe is like, do I even matter? And he's like, oh, oh, oh, you do matter. I chose you. What a gift. And lastly, for this section, we get put into God's loving care.

Minimalism, our obsession with minimalism is a human effort to rid our lives of the clutter of the world. And so we're always trying to figure out, how do I get this off me? How do I get out of these obligations? How do I get rid of this junk? How do I, because we just have the sense it's all too much and who can we trust because we're always overwhelmed? Look at what this verse says. I am the vine, my father's the gardener. He cuts off every branch of me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so it will be even more fruitful. Do you know what a relief it is to know that behind your actual life, there's a God working all things together for your good? Do you know what a relief it is to know that you are not subject to the power dynamics of your family or your workplace or your culture, and they're not God over you? Do you know what it is to have a divine agent of love pruning out what you don't need because he knows what you do and what's best for you? How good this is. Maybe you've been let go and you feel shame about that, but God's like, you didn't get let go, I pruned that job because I got something better in your heart. Maybe you've been rejected in a relationship

and you're like, gosh, I'm so lonely, and he goes, lonely? That is a temporary patch. Bad fruit from that thing, I got good fruit coming for this thing. To know there's a God behind you, making sure that you produce maximum fruit. Power of abiding in the vine. What happens when you do this? Can you imagine being good at abiding? Like I tell people, my life goal, black belt in abiding. Listen, man, John's not good at much, but homeboy can abide. That's like my, that's my new motto, homeboy can abide, okay, that's what I. When you get connected to Christ's love, like really, personally, existentially, spiritually connected to the love of Christ, is there any more transformative force in history? I wanna just do a little case study here. Do you remember John the Beloved? Do you remember him? He's in the Bible, and he's got some epistles, and do you know what his epistles are about? Love, love, love, get out of the darkness, love, love, love, God loves you, love one another because God loves you, don't be a jerk, don't hate, God loves you, it's a love, and love. Okay, so it's like love, la, la, la, la, la, la, love land.

It's just like, it's all about love. That's not how he started. Do you know what his original name was? Son of Thunder, ah, ah, ah, it's like thunder. It's just, you hear it. That's Australian, so I'm allowed to use it in church. Listen, it was not a compliment. Him and his. to him and his brother James because of their just like aggressive temperament were called sons of thunder. In Luke nine, there's a famous scene where they're going through a Samaritan village and they reject Jesus. And John's like, would you like me to call down fire and destroy this village? Jesus is like, I'm here to seek and save the lost man. Which part of good Samaritan, which part of Samaritan woman are you not getting in terms of the heroes of these stories? Once a man comes out casting demons and John's like, are you with us? You can't do that if you're not with us. One day he's walking along and he's arguing like who's gonna be the greatest in the kingdom and he gets his mom involved. Not playing fair when you're like, hey, can you go ask mom, can you go ask Jesus if I can be on the left and right hand side? Jesus is like, and then listen,

Jesus is like, can you drink the cup of who has performed for them? They're like, oh heck yeah we can. What changes? Well, part of it changes in the transfiguration where he sees Jesus in his glory and realizes it's Jesus and no one else. And then part of it happens because he gets close to Christ's heart. That story of the last supper, it says that John is leaning back against Jesus' chest. As it's been pointed out, the gospel of John starts with Jesus in the heart of the father and it ends with John resting on the heart of Jesus and the goal of the gospel is to get God's heart near your heart so you can have his heart. And then John's the only one who's at the foot of the cross. Everyone else run but John's there. And John sees his desire to call down fire on his enemies and here is Jesus dying for his enemies. Father, forgive him, you don't know what you're doing here. And everything within him says, oh I've got this wrong. I don't wanna be a son of thunder. I wanna be an apostle of love. He never calls himself a son of thunder. He calls himself, what a cheeky, he wrote the thing, snuck this in, kinda unfair, but props. He called himself the disciple Jesus loved. That new identity wasn't about his zeal or his passion or his self-righteousness, it was all about love

and it says in 1 John 4, we love because he first loved us. Ever heard the phrase God is love? Your boy John wrote that. At the end of his life, church tradition tells us there's all these stories about John as an old man tempered by time and melted with love. John got really old and he couldn't walk to church anymore and they'd still want him to speak because he was one of Jesus' disciples and they'd bring him in and all he would say is little children love one another. And he'd just say that every time so they got sick of hearing him. And then one day someone said, why do you just like preach something else? Why do you always just say love one another? He goes, because if you do this, this will be enough. This is all. I say that if you want to become a person of love, you've got to remain in Christ's love and that you won't necessarily get more godly by doing a bunch of stuff for God or getting in the rage vortex of the world because man's anger does not produce the righteousness that God requires. The way you will become a person of love is by being connected to God's love. And you let that love flow into your heart and the fruit of his love flows through you to heal the world.

I think of no better example of this, of how when we become people of love that we can be a source of hope in the darkness of this world other than what is in the top five movies widely recognized by all people in all times and all cultures and all places as the Shawshank Redemption. Who has not seen the Shawshank Redemption? Good news, snow days. Snow days, use your time wisely. I re-watched it this week. Beautiful film. If you're not familiar with Shawshank Redemption, it's a story about Andy Dufresne. He's a man wrongly convicted, goes to prison and is just put in a horrific situation in the 1940s. And while he's in there, he's like, maintains his innocence. But slowly over the course of time, comes to terms with his fate. But he carries a different spirit with him. And there's this one beautiful moment where after working on behalf of everybody, got like this terrible library. He finally gets books delivered and then as a surprise they deliver music. So now they've got a record player and in a moment of total defiance he locks the doors when he's in this office and then takes, we got photos of this look at yeah these are good, locks the doors and broadcasts a recording of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeakers to everybody who's in the

prison and it's just remarkable. In the film you see hundreds of like hardened criminals just like stopped in their tracks and the camera just like pans over their faces and for a moment they're just like what is this message of hope and then Red Morgan Freeman who's the other main character says it was like some beautiful bird flapped into our dry little cage and made these walls dissolve away. I spent most of this week listening to this song from the movie while walking around New York. Now Annie knows that he's going to be punished so he's thrown into the hole which is solitary confinement for two weeks and everybody's like what's going to happen? Morgan Freeman says this about the experience, I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a great place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away and for the briefest briefest of moments every last man in Shawshank felt free. Now Andy after coming out from being in the hole comes back to lunch with his friends and they're like how was it in solitary confinement and he says it's the easiest time I ever did. Like that's not true, how did you do that? And he says this, he said the music wasn't on the record player, the music was in my head and the music was in my heart. There's something inside you they can't get to, they can't touch, it's yours and he called it hope. My simple point is we live in a world that is desperate for people of love and hope to broadcast something other than anxiety and fear and hatred into the world to transform the world we live in. Saint Seraphim of Sara said this, acquire a peaceful spirit and thousands around you will be saved. I think it's true in Europe, acquire a loving spirit and people will run to you for love. You will bear the fruit of whatever you abide in and most people are caught in a cycle of ruminating of the failures of their lives, the things they've been through and the pain of this world and Jesus came as a vine not to dismiss those things but to put his love as a source and give you new power, new hope and new fruit and give you an imagination of what could be with the love of God as the operating system of your heart. Whistled at my own sermon unintentionally. How do you abide? Okay, we're out of time, how do you abide? Okay, I want to give you abiding in three words, okay? I want to make this as clear and memorable as I can. Here's what it is, receive and respond. Abiding is receiving and responding. You can't give what you don't have and if you

don't share what you have, you're not responding properly. Fruit is always for others, receive and respond. So, you receive his love by responding to the invitation. Listen, I want to banish the word quiet time, maybe you need quiet time, that's okay but we have this idea that spending time with God is like, oh gosh, I better do this and my small group leader's gonna like get mad at me. How's your time with God? Why'd you get out of his word? Rather watch Withering Heights. You're doing it wrong. That's because you think you have to generate something up, you think it depends on you. My morning time, I wake up, I wake up, I'm like, oh yeah baby, I'm about to baptize my heart in the unconditional eternal wellspring of love. with the sight of peace and joy before I get to the prayer room. I can't, I need this. Life is hard, man. I've been through some stuff. I need power. I need someone to change my heart so I'm not a bitter, angry man. And I've been here too long. A lot of the wonder's worn off, man. I'm fighting for wonder. And I know I can't generate it within. I can't willpower my way through my day. I can't medicate or numb my way through the day. I gotta baptize my heart in the stream of life. So I get up, man, and there's some times I get so caught up in it, I'm late for meetings. Not irresponsibly, but considerably. But what happens, like, bro, I was caught up. I was caught up. It's a portal into the love you ache for.

It is a shortcut to years of striving and trying to achieve. You'd go there every day. As the fathers loved me, so I've loved you. Now remain in my love. Second, your prayer changes when you abide. A lot of times, we are praying. Do you remember J. McAdams? The stuff on narrative identity theory? Two kinds of narratives, contaminated narratives and then redemptive narratives. There's only two narratives of the human heart. They're either contaminated by sin, shame, and failure or they're redeemed with hope and life. He wasn't even a Christian. But a lot of times, we're praying out of contaminated narratives. And the reason you've gotta get the words of Jesus in you is because you need your bad scripts to be re-scripted with what he says about you. Self-condemnation, sorry, that's not who Jesus says I am. That's what it used to be. It's not who I am. That's not where I'm going. That may be what I've done, but it's not who I am. You've gotta get Jesus' words in you. If you remain in me, my words remain in you. Ask whatever you want and it'll be done for you. It's letting his words stay in you. What do I mean by that? When I got together with Christy,

she'd write me these letters. Well, truth be told, her handwriting is not incredibly readable. And so she would type emails and sign them. So she'd type a letter and sign it and put perfume on it and all that stuff. So strong, so strong. And you know what I would do with these letters? Carry them around. And I'd be like, ooh, what did she mean by you are my hunky Australian? Like, what did she mean by that? You are my hunky. I'm taking that as a compliment. You are my hunky. I just would meditate on it and I would think about it and her words would form my inner dialogue that I would share with her in person. And here's what Jesus says, whose words are you letting in shape your heart? You gotta let his words shape your heart. Then you gotta obey him. If you keep my commands, you'll remain in my love. Just as, like nobody who says I love you but then cheats on you really loves you that much. Then nobody says I know what you like but I'm gonna do the opposite of that and do what I like and I hate you and don't care about your preferences. So this is not like you have to.

This is like you do it because you're in love. The level of restraint you show in marriage amongst all the life options out of love is extraordinary. That's what love does. And then we love one another. My commands is love each other as I've loved you. All social research tells us this. The true happiest is found in giving yourself to something beyond yourself. You wanna be miserable? Be obsessed with yourself. So we have to love the joy of joining, of being the church that Jesus wants. And that comes through love. We started by saying, is it possible to pour yourself out without burning out? The answer is yes. If you remain in Jesus' love, rely on the Spirit's power and focus on eternal fruit. Now, you gotta build in your life a place where you connect with God's love in which you then live from that love. Maybe late at night, maybe lunchtime, maybe a place for you, maybe wherever, but you gotta be with Jesus. You gotta receive His love. You gotta fill the tank and you've gotta have something to give. And the enemy's number one goal is to sever you from the source of love, to make you reactive,

independent, relying on the flesh, struggling in your own power. So if you get one thing right, make it your goal to be a black belt in abiding. Every conference I went to when I was a new pastor, went to seminary, went to all these like pastor's events where they're like, don't you? grew people up because you're not properly a godly man. And I'm like, yes, got it, yes. But they always had this section, and here's what the section was called. Pastor gets up, talks about how he burned up, kids hate him, super strained marriage, miserable, and the pastor gets up and is like, don't do this. And I just remember thinking, dang. There's a lot of hazards to this job. There's mental health issues. Like, this will mess your family up. There's a lot. So I don't think I want to make the same choices as him. And they're saying that the key is spending time with God, abiding as I think I'm going to try and get good at that. I go to the next conference, same thing, different bloke. Hey, almost blew my life up building this church. I was like, I don't want to blow my life up building a church. So I haven't done much right. But I've pursued the black belt as the primary goal of my life. Here's one of the places I go and pray.

Has anyone ever been to the Clinton Community Garden in Hell's Kitchen? Got to live there to get a key, folks. One hour a month, they'll sell you a key. And the lady who owns the keys knows that she's the key holder. Sometimes I go there, you know, like you get around Pentecostal people, and you just want to do a prophetic act. You haven't been around them, you haven't gotten out in the kingdom enough, okay. Pentecostals always want to do prophetic acts. I love a prophetic act. Here's my prophetic act, I go to the Chelsea Community Garden. Look inside, you go inside, look at this. It's on 48th Street, between 9th and 10th. You gotta be a key holder, key in, key out, by the way. I've seen people trapped in there. Like, can you let me out? I'm like, this is people in heaven that don't love Jesus. And I go, what's isn't isn't is hell? And they go, it's so beautiful I can't get out. Another sermon, anyway. C.S. Lewis already gave it. Next slide here. When you go in here, they're doing stuff, they're doing beautiful stuff. There's picnics, there's wine and cheese, there's Hell's Kitchen honey.

They got bees, they're making honey, Hell's Kitchen honey. Next slide, once you get over in corner, sometimes on my worst days, and I'm like, I can't do it, God, New York's too much, leadership's too much, I'm tired, I'm hurting. I go sit under there, and I literally get under the vine, and I just say, Jesus, you're up. I attach my need for power, love, and fruit to you. Thank you that this vine is here, whether I'm working hard or not, it's just here living its life, and I receive your love. You go to a place like that, God doesn't want more from you. God wants you more. These are very different things. So, Jesus says I'm the true vine. Outside, I'm looking like a middle-aged man with a lot of miles on him in New York City. But inside, I look like the freaking Napa Valley. I'm doing farm-to-table food. I'm doing wine lattes. I'm doing just, it's so good. Doing wine tastings. And people ask, what's it like? How do you do it in New York? It's quite simple. You build a vineyard of the love of God. You build a vineyard of the love of God in the middle of your heart, and you go there often. Do you need a different source today?

Any of you weary? Most of us don't burn out, we run out. It's a depletion issue, not a burnout issue. Most of us have just stopped connecting to the source that gives us life. So, not in a high-level theoretical sense, in a very, very real practical sense. If you're not a Christian here and you're like, man, I thought my career was gonna be it. I thought hooking up with people was gonna be it. I thought getting some power was gonna be it. I thought getting recognition was gonna be it, and it's not enough. Well, you wanna try a source that won't let you down and won't run out? Just abide in something different. Jesus says, come to me, I'll graft you in. And my life, my life-giving river will flow through your life. I'll fill those deficits, I'll heal your wounds, I'll meet your needs, and then through you will flow fruit that blesses others. But you've got to be connected. Maybe you're here and you're tired and you're weary, and you just need fresh life, fresh love today. We'd love to be able to pray for you. So we're going to close our service. I know we've got to beat the blizzard, but I'd hate for us to miss the love of God. It's not even that snowy yet. So let's stand to our feet.

And I'd ask the prayer team if you'd come forward. If you want to surrender to the love of God, you can just say, Lord, I give up the false vine. Jesus, I believe you are who you say you are. I believe that you said no greater love is any man this than he lay down his life for his friends. Jesus, you said I'm clean because of the word you spoke to me. Lord, I receive your word. I receive your life and death. I receive your life as the source of my life. You can just say that to the Lord right now. He'll come into your life, be the center of your being, and give you hope. Maybe you're weary. Maybe you're tired. Maybe you're discouraged. Maybe you're beat up. Maybe you've got something coming up this week and you're just like, I want to come back to the source. So if you need prayer for anything at all, we'd love to be able to pray for you. If someone criticized you this week and you want someone to just bless you to pray a word of encouragement over you, the altar is open. We are here to serve you. If you've got to run, feel free to leave. Bless you. Stay warm. Stay safe. But if you want to press in, the altar is going to be open and we'd love to pray for you. So if you need to leave, grab the kids. No worries.

Bless you. See you next week. But if you want to press in, let's stay and let's meet God at the altar together. Amen.