Christ the Vine Message #1 “Christ the True Vine” Ed Miller, July 20, 2024
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Listen to the audio above while following along in the transcript below which is also available for download from www.biblestudyministriesinc.com
Welcome and Prayer
I want to remind you of a principle that is absolutely indispensable, and that principle is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. How we do praise the Lord for the Bible and for every aid, every assistance, every help and every book, and every commentary, every word study, every atlas, every concordance, and every help, but the bottom line, brothers and sisters in Christ, after you’ve plowed through the helps, you better come before the Lord as a little baby, and you better say, “Lord, now You unveil Christ to my heart.” If you don’t trust God to illumine your heart to this book, He won’t use what is helpful anymore. We thank Him for the helps, but they’re not indispensable; His revelation is indispensable. The Bible, like our Lord Jesus, is human and divine. We need the human side. We don’t encourage or glory in ignorance. We want the scholarship, but there’s also a divine side, and only God can give that.
We will be in John 15, but for a moment turn to Luke 18:31,
“And He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘Behold, we’re going up to Jerusalem. All things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished.’”
Then He gives a list,
“’He’ll be handed over to the gentiles.’”
Is there anything puzzling about that?
“’He’ll be mocked and mistreated and spit upon.’”
A child can understand that.
“’After they’ve scourged Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise again.’”
Those are simple facts. Verse 34,
“But the disciples understood none of these things; the meaning of His statement was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend the things that were said.”
Nothing could be simpler than the facts that He gave; He’ll be handed over, He’ll be beaten, He’ll be scourged, He’ll be spit upon, He’ll die, and He’ll rise. And it was hidden from them. No matter how clear the statements, if God does not reveal it, we don’t get it. So, I’m going to ask you to bow with me and trust the Lord to unveil, to take the veil away from our hearts, and shine the light on the Lord Jesus, and then give us grace to walk in the light as He is in the light. Let’s pray…
Father, we thank Thee again for this precious book, and the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts ever to make these plain statements plain to our spirit. Speak to us, visit us; we know when we see Your face that we will be enlightened, and we’ll be changed. We ask that you minister grace to our hearts, everyone
and that none would be passed by, but everyone would see the Lord in a living and vital way. We ask this in the all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Introduction
Turn to John 15. Before we look at this marvelous text, I’m sure you are familiar with it in John 15:1-17, how God’s people have been blessed by this passage through the years. Let me make a couple of introductory comments before we look into the text itself. I’m under no delusions as I come before you this evening. I understand that this is a familiar passage, and I also got intelligence that you’ve already been studying it. That’s one of the blessings I have in my own heart, ministering here at Family Ministries, because the text is known in advance, and you eat it up and meditate on it. It saves me from some donkey work, and I appreciate that. But everybody knows what we’re going to talk about. You know that Christ is the vine, and Christians are the branches, and we abide in the vine, and the vine provides for the branches, and our Father is the husbandman, and He prunes the fruitful branch, so I understand that there’s nothing new here, but I am praying that even though I won’t say anything you haven’t heard before, that the Spirit of God would anoint it so that the reality of the truth would refresh our souls. It doesn’t have to be new, and it doesn’t have to be novel. It’s thrilling because it’s true and not because it’s new. May God refresh us as we look at these well-known, precious truths!
The second thing I want to call attention to is that I’m going to give an outline, but I also know this chapter preaches itself, and because of the nature of the content of this wonderful chapter, there will be overlapping. In other words, we’re going to speak about the true vine, but we’ve got to touch on abiding when you talk about the vine, and we’re going to talk about abiding in Christ, and we’re going to have to talk about how He deals with the vine and prunes it. So, we’re going to go back and forth, so there will be overlapping.
Then the last thing I want to say by way of introduction is that even though we’re familiar with this passage, we’re not familiar with it. Do you know what I mean by that? Every part of God’s truth has no bottom, and there’s no end to anything. When you come to this book there’s just no end to it. Though there is a wonder and a mystery here, I’ve asked God this weekend to enable us to appropriate and enter into everything that He has revealed. I have an idea that sometimes we hide behind mystery as an excuse for ignorance. Somehow, it sounds honorable to sit at the feet of mystery and take off our shoes and sing “Holy Ground” and not enter in and not claim that. There’s mystery here, but we’re not going to use the mystery as an excuse for ignorance because it’s revealed mystery, and so we want to enter in. We’re not trying to dazzle anybody with light; I’m not going to spring any truth on you. You know what we’re going to talk about, but I want to enter in and ask God to help us appropriate everything that He has revealed.
John 15:1-16:
“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 bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
“As the Father has loved me, so have I 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 friends.You are my friends if you do what I command.I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have 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.”
Trust the Lord with me as we go through this, that He’ll unveil Himself.
Let me give a simple outline of what I’d like to cover this evening and tomorrow, Lord willing, and then on the Lord’s Day. It’s a simple outline and almost everyone who touches this text divides it up this way. Tonight, I’d like to focus on the heart of God in terms of the statement, “I am the true vine.” Basically, that’s what I’d like us to see tonight. Why did Jesus say that? What did He mean by that? So, by God’s assistance we want to nail down the revelation of Christ as the true vine. Then logically, we want to look at all that God intends by the truth, “Abide in Me in order that you might bring forth fruit.” What is that all about, abiding in order to bring forth fruit? I think beyond a doubt the main message of this section has to do with fruit bearing through abiding in Christ, the vine. So, we’d like to discuss verse 2 – “fruit”: verse 5 – “more fruit”: verse 8 – “much fruit”: and verse 16 – “remaining fruit”. What is all that comes out of abiding in Christ? Verse 5, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” What is that all about?
Sunday morning, Lord willing, we’ll take the next step and ask God to unveil Himself as the vine dresser. What does it mean, “My Father is the husbandman?” What is pruning? How does He prune the fruitful vine? What fruit comes from the Lord out of my life that God cuts off, and why? We need to see that. So, Lord willing, that’s what we’re going to look at. Tonight, it will be “Christ the Vine”, and tomorrow night, Lord willing, it will be “Abiding in the Vine to Bring Forth Fruit”, and then, “My Father is the Husbandman”, and what does it mean when God prunes us, and how does He do that? John 15:1, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandmen.”
Let me begin by calling attention to the balance of scripture. The vine is a very precious illustration in the mind and in the heart of God. He didn’t use it once or twice or three times. We say, “The tree planted by the water. That’s a picture of the righteousness.” We say, “The rock; that’s a picture of…” We say, “The brook, that pictures…” What does the vine picture, in the eternal counsels way back before there was anything and God decided, “I think I’ll create a vine.”? Why did God say that? He didn’t say, “Well, the vine will spruce up the creation. It’s pretty and it’s nice.” God had something in His heart, in His mind, and the whole creation is a museum; everything has its spiritual counterpart.
Let me give you several illustrations. The nation of Israel is about to go into Canaan, land of milk and honey, and wheat and richness, pomegranates, the land of milk and honey, a picture of Christ, the life of milk and honey, the land, the Promised Land, and when He wanted to picture it, you remember the story. It’s Numbers 13 where the spies go into the land and they bring out an earnest, a foretaste. What did they bring back? Grapes. God said, “I better create the vine and grapes because I want to picture the whole Promised Land. And that one cluster of grapes being carried on a pole between two people will picture the Promised Land.” God said, “I think I’ll create a vine.”
Go through the Bible and just trace it out: wine, grapes, branch, vine. It’s amazing! You read in Psalms 104, “Wine that makes glad the heart of man.” So, when we talk about natural joy, the world talks about wine; that’s natural joy. God says in Ephesians 5:8, “Don’t be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit of God,” natural joy picturing the supernatural joy in the Lord that has no hangover—God’s joy. God said, “I’m going to create the vine because I want to picture the Promised Land, and I want to picture the joy of the Lord. Then, when He wanted to picture His people, all His people, Israel, Hosea 10:1, “Israel is a luxurious vine.” We’ll talk about that in another connection. When He wanted to picture what we love so much, the New Covenant, grace, He said in Luke 5:37, “It’s like new wine in new wine skins.” He didn’t just arbitrarily and by caprice say, “I think I’ll make a vine.” When He wanted to picture the most beautiful things in His heart, He said, “I’m going to create a vine to picture the Promised Land, and I’m going to make a vine to picture the joy of the Lord, and I’m going to make a vine in order to picture My people, Israel, and I’m going to use the vine to picture the New Covenant, and when He wanted to picture security and safety, 1 Kings:4 and in other places, He pictured His people sitting under the vine and under the fig tree, safe and secure. The vine is God’s picture. When He wanted us to know about His love in the Song of Solomon 1:2, He said, “My love is better than wine.” It’s God’s picture; it’s God’s picture of everything.
Even the negative side, when He wanted to picture the judgment, Revelation 14, He sends out the angels to gather the clusters from the vine of the earth; it’s all God’s picture. When He wanted to picture heaven, He said, “I’m not going to drink this anymore with you down here. The next time I drink this will be there.” Every time you see the vine He’s telling us something wonderful and something glorious. When He begins His great ministry on the earth, and He begins his miracle, how did He begin? He turns water into wine. It’s not an accident. This is all planned by God. How precious is the vine! And when He wanted us to remember Him, you know the story, He took the cup, the precious blood of Christ, pictured by the juice of the grape. And when He wanted to picture His church, He pictures them, chapter 15, as the vine. And when He wants to picture marriage, the right kind of marriage, He said, Psalm 128:3, “And the woman, she’ll be like a fruitful vine.” This is not a mistake. Every place you look…
Don’t read “vine” la, la, la. It’s one of God’s most prolific pictures, created on purpose to illustrate everything. Do you know why? It’s because the vine is the love of God, and that’s the joy of the Lord, and that’s the Promised Land, and that’s marriage, and that’s union, and that’s fellowship, and that’s the blood of Christ, and that’s the New Covenant, and that’s grace— “I’m the true vine.” Everything the vine pictures, all through the scriptures, Jesus said, “I’m the true vine.” No other picture that I know of, except one I might touch on in a little while, except these two go so far to say so much and to communicate more of God’s precious truth than this vine.
At this point it’s about one day before He dies. What made Him come up with this illustration; what made Him think of it? Some would say it was because the vine in the New Testament times, when Herod enlarged and beautified the temple, had this tremendous elaborate vine over the door of the temple. Scholars tell us it was one of the most prominent sights in Jerusalem. If you came to Jerusalem, you had to stop and see the vine. Scholars tell us that the clusters of grapes that hung on that vine, made out of gold and made out of gems, were the size of a man, and they were just hanging there. One commentator I read said, “In that day, it was estimated that just the vine was worth about twelve million dollars.” I don’t know; I’m not fighting for that. I don’t care if it was worth twelve million dollars, but I’m trying to show you the prominence of the vine in that day. Whether that was the reason that He thought of it or whether in the Upper Room there is an open window and the vines are coming in, or whether it’s because He instituted the Lord’s Table and used the cup and thought of the vine, or whether when they departed down into the Kidron Valley there on the way to Gethsemane, they went by vines, or it was because He was the mighty Creator and had planned it all, “I created the vine to picture this,” for whatever the reason, He said that day, “I am the true vine.”
What Jesus Meant by, “I am the true vine.”
JESUS IS THE TRUE VINE AND I AM NOT
I want to suggest for you, brothers and sisters in Christ, as we press in on the heart of God, two things that I think He meant when He said, “I’m the true vine.” If God can begin to break these two things on us, if He can dawn this truth on us, we’ll be ready for what it means to abide in Christ. If you miss this, you are going to struggle with abiding in Christ. It is so basic and so cardinal and so fundamental to understand God’s heart when He said, “I am the true vine.” I’m suggesting that it means at least these two things. Let me get that before your heart.
I think He meant when He said, “I am the true vine,” I think He meant this, “I am the true vine, and you are not.” I think that’s what He meant. “You are not the vine; I am the true vine, and you are not.” The reason why I say that is we don’t read this with a Jewish mindset, but all along the way they were taught that they were the vine. When they put that vine up over the door, and some visitor came, they would say, “See the vine? That’s us, the people of God—Israel.” Let me give you a couple of verses on that. Turn to Psalm 80:8,
“Thou broughtest the vine out of Egypt. Thou didst drive out the nations and planest it. Thou preparest room before, and it took deep root, and it filled the land. The mountains were covered with the shadow of it and the boughs thereof were like cedars of God. It set out its branches to the sea and shoots to the river.”
They sang that, “We’re the vine that was brought out of Egypt and planted in the land and spread all over.” Then, when they got messed up and went under the chastening rod, look at Psalm 80:14&15,
“Turn again, we beseech Thee, oh God of hosts, look down from heaven and behold, visit this vine.” (They were the vine; Israel was the vine.) “And the stock which Thy right hand has planted, the branch that Thou made strong for Thyself.”
Isaiah 5:1, the prophet spoke about it,
“Let me now sing for my Beloved a song of my Beloved concerning His vineyard. My well Beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill. He dug it all around, and removed its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in the middle of it, and He hewn out a wine vat in it, and He expected it to produce good grapes, but it produced only worthless grapes.”
What’s the vineyard? Isaiah 5:7,
“The vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel; the men of Judah are His delightful plant.”
Everywhere they went, they were the vine. They went into their Bible; they were the vine. God took them out of Egypt and God planted them in the land and they are the choice plant. Jeremiah 2:21,
“I planted you a choice vine, a completely faithful seed, and how you’ve turned yourself into a degenerate vine.”
Everywhere you turned, they were the vine, and when they were judged, the prophet said, Joel 1:7,
“God has laid His vine in waste.”
It’s His vine; it’s His people. It’s Israel.
The idea of being God’s vine, being cared for by the Lord, being watered day and night, and being watched over, gave them a national pride. They were glad to be God’s vine, and they were glad to tell everybody that they were God’s vine. It’s true that God called them a vine. Why did he choose the vine? It’s easy to remember John 15/Ezekiel 15, because in Ezekiel He gives the clue as to why He used “vine” for them. They did not get it, but that’s why. Listen to Ezekiel 15:1,
“The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood of a branch which is among the trees of the forest? Can wood be taken from it to make anything? Can man make a peg from it from which to hang a vessel? If it’s been put in the fire for fuel, and the fire consumes both of its ends and its middle part has been charred, is it useful for anything? Behold, if while it is intact, it’s not made into anything, how much less when the fire has consumed it and it’s charred, can it be made into anything?”
Why did God choose the vine? It’s because it’s worthless wood. That’s why it was a picture of Israel. They didn’t get that, but that’s why He chose it, because you can’t do anything with it. You can’t make a stool out of a vine. You can’t make a hat rack out of a vine. What can you make out of a vine? Maybe you can make a wreath or a whistle. That’s all we can do with a vine. You can’t go to Scott’s Furniture and say, “Give me something in grapevine.” They probably don’t carry it. As Ezekiel tried to point out, if the wood of the vine is worthless when it’s alive, if it’s cut off and it’s put into the fire and burned, what are you going to do with that wood? Even when Israel was under chastening, and when they were cut off and charred and burned at both ends, they still didn’t get it and they said, “We are God’s vine.” “You missed the point; you should read Ezekiel; you should know why God calls you the vine in the first place.” But they didn’t get it.
By the time we come to the New Testament, they’ve had four thousand years of this, “You’re the vine, you’re the vine, you’re the vine, there’s the vine, golden vine, beautiful vine, I’m the vine,” and Jesus comes up on this last day and says, “Before I go, you need to know that you are not the vine.” That blew them away. That was radical for them to hear that. That was such an amazing statement, that they were not the vine. John 15:4&5, sometimes it takes years to learn this and sometimes we need to be shocked out of it, too, because even though we hold the creed and we’re orthodox and we say, “We believe the truth,” unless God convinces you that you are not the vine, you are going to try to be the vine. Unless God shocks and chokes me out of this idea, it’s ingrained, and we think we’re the vine. Verse 4&5, “Abide in Me and I in You, as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, neither can you, except you abide in Me; without Me you can do nothing.” When we look for verses for the deity of Christ, and look for, “Jesus is God,” sometimes there are better verses than those verses that say Jesus is God. Think of one of your neighbors, just one of them, and go over to that neighbor and knock at the door, not to the whole world, just the neighbor, and say, “Without me you can do nothing.” Do you know what they’ll say? “Who do you think you are? What kind of arrogance is that?” Our Lord Jesus said to the whole world, “Without Me you can do nothing.” He’s God, or He’s a madman to say something like that. What a revelation that is, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”
The reason it’s so hard to grasp that is because we proved Him wrong many times. “Without Me you can do nothing.” Yes, I can; I can do a lot of stuff without God. I can, and so can you. I’m not going to point fingers, but I’ll bet there are ministries that have been built that have not come from God, and churches and missions and seminaries and Bible schools and families and lives. We do it all the time. “What do you mean, ‘Without Me you can do nothing.’? Without Him we do a lot of stuff, and we get involved in a lot of work.” Here is what He meant, “Without Me you can do nothing that can be called fruit.” You can do a lot of stuff but nothing that is called fruit, and nothing that will remain, and nothing that will glorify God. That’s what He meant. “Without Me you can do nothing.”
As long as we look to some vine that is not Jesus, and if we think we’re the vine, or if we think the church is the vine, or we think that some ministry is the vine, or some man or some woman is the vine, we’re in big trouble. Jesus said, “I’m the true vine,” and by that He meant that you’re not the vine. I’m not the vine for me, and I’m not the vine for you, and you’re not the vine for you, and you’re not the vine for me, and we’re not the vine for us. You get the idea. Our Lord Jesus is the vine. You know, I’m not going to get into my testimony but for years I thought I was the vine. Did you ever try to do God’s stuff? You get so tired. You faint and you can’t do it. You get so discouraged and so frustrated, and you try to live off of your own energy and you try to generate and build up the zeal and get involved. You’ve been there. Jesus said that He was the true vine.
JESUS IS THE REALITY OF THE TRUE VINE
That’s not the main thing that He meant, though, when He said, “I’m the vine and you’re not.” He certainly meant that. But let me suggest another thing He meant when He said, “I am the true vine.” I think He meant, “I am the vine, that is, that I created the vine to picture something, and I am the reality that I pictured that vine to create.” In the original it is, “I am the genuine vine; I am the reality that answers to the vine.” If the vine pictures the Promised Land and natural joy and supernatural joy and the love of God and the New Covenant and security and heaven and that whole list I gave you, He’s saying, “I am the true vine, the reality of all of that.”
I want you to imagine with me, humor me and play with me here, and I want you to go back in your imagination because I’m going to put words in God’s mouth. I don’t want to be irreverent, but I think on the level of earth we’ve got to create things to get us looking in the right direction. I think it went something like this. We’re in eternity past and there’s nothing; there’s no angels, no earth, no light and there’s nothing. God is up there, and I speak as a fool, and He’s trying to figure out what He’s going to do. He says, “I think I’ll create something because I want to communicate Me, and I’m going to create things to picture Me, and I’m going to make a great museum that they can live in. So, I need to communicate my proof to them.” So, God thinks, “How can I communicate life? I’m the Life, and I want them to have Life; I want them to have Life with a capital L. I want them to have abundant Life. How can I communicate Life?” And I think God said, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll create life because that’s a great illustration of Life. I’ll create biology to illustrate Life, and then I know when I create life that they’ll look at life and they’ll study life and they’ll observe life, and maybe they’ll catch on. I’ll put life everywhere. I’ll put life in the air, and I’ll put life in the sea, and I’ll put life on the land and I’ll make buds and I’ll make birds and I’ll make elephants and I’ll make fish and I’ll make plants and mushrooms, and I’ll make life everywhere. So, every time they turn around, they’re going to see life, life, life, and maybe they’ll catch on, and I’ll just make that so that they’ll understand.” He also created inorganic things which is another picture that we won’t get into. That is just as thrilling but we won’t touch that. So, God’s plan was to create an organic world full of life, budding, teaming with life—life in the river, life in the puddle, life in the dry land, life in the air, life, life everywhere. You know I’m right; it’s there and you see it.
So, God carefully designed this plan that all organisms have in common. They don’t know what to call it, so they call it protoplasm and they break it down and say, “Well, it’s got carbon and it’s got hydrogen and it’s got nitrogen and it’s called life,” and they don’t know what it is; they just recognize it. And it’s different from a stone because a stone doesn’t have that thing called life. A bud has life, and a stone doesn’t have life. There’s an unbridgeable gulf between the stone and the plant and the flower and the insect. I’m not trying to define life; I’m just trying to recognize that God made this on purpose, and it’s a fact.
Then God said, “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll make all of that life, but I’ve got to be careful not to make anything that lives independently alive; not one thing in life can have independent life, because that will ruin my picture.” So, God said, “Now I’ve got life. Now I think I will create something to sustain that life, something to support that life, something to maintain, to develop that life, so that that life can survive and grow and develop and multiply. I think I’ll make the environment.” All that happened in the eternal counsel. I know it. God just said, “I’m going to make the environment so that life can live. I’ve created a zillion forms of life and now I’ve got to make an element in which they can live and move and have their being.” So, it came to pass, and you know it, that this world consists of life, organic life, and in every living thing is that principle of life, but in no living thing is the condition of life. The conditions of life are in the environment. The principle of life is in the organism. So, I have lungs, but I need the atmosphere. So, I have a stomach and I need food. God has made me in such a way in everything so that the living thing needs the environment. Then God said, “In My museum I’m going to have to see to it that the organism can only live as it has union with the environment. If that is broken, the organism will die.” He made it that way. It was on purpose, and God designed it that way.
What is life? For an organism, on the level of earth and in the words of science, what is life? Life is just an organism living in union with its environment. What is death? Death is when that organism is cut off somehow from its environment. If it’s cut off a little bit, it dies a little bit. When it’s finally cut off, it’s altogether dead. So, the deaf are dead to the whole world of sound and cut off from that part of the environment. The blind are cut off from the whole world of sight.
Sometimes the environment changes and sometimes we change, and we have to adjust. You can read all that in your science books. I can run from a storm, and I can maybe run from cold weather, but sometimes something happens in me, and I can’t run anymore, and I’m cut off from the environment and I die. God made it that way on purpose because He wanted to say, “I am the true vine; I am the environment; I am the element of the branch. I created all that to show that I am the environment, and in Me they will live, move and have their being.” Christ is the Christian’s environment. God didn’t need to do it that way. He didn’t need to create a universe to make Him happy. He is a happy God before you came along, and a happy God before I came along. He had joy and fullness and completeness and purpose, and it was all inside of God. He didn’t need to create an angel or an archangel. He doesn’t need you and He doesn’t need me. All the Christians gathered in the world gathered together from every age and generation wouldn’t be enough to make one priest to worship Him the way He ought to be worshipped. Every living thing He has ever made all put together couldn’t be an offering for Him. He’s Almighty God, He’s El Shaddai, He’s Jehovah, He’s sufficiency, but He wanted us to see it. He didn’t have to stoop to picture Himself as a mother hen or an eagle or a rock or a vine. He did that to accommodate and gratify our weakness, so that we could understand, to make Himself visible.
What is suggested in John 15 under the figure of the vine and the branches is fully developed in the epistles of the New Testament. Let me do just a little more donkey work with you and try to stay with me on this. For four thousand years through forty-four books of the Bible we never had this great revelation. It wasn’t until Pentecost, and it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit came, that He unveiled His truth, that you can’t even open the epistles without seeing it, “In Christ Jesus.” Why is that so prominent in the Bible, in the New Testament? “In Christ” is your environment; “in Christ” is your element. Christ is your native air, and Christ is your native food, Christ is your native drink, Christ is your native rest, Christ is now your element, and you live in Him, you move in Him, you breathe in Him, and it’s all in Christ Jesus, in the Lord, in Christ Jesus. We’re not just externally connected like two parallel lines, that He’s got His life and I’ve got my life. We’re together and we’re in there. It’s not just that we receive His truth, that He preaches gospel. It’s not just that we’re saved from hell and destined for heaven. That’s true, but now there is something wonderful, something is new that God has done. He’s inside and now He wants to live out His life. This is a glorious thing! Open the New Testament and begin to read, we are partakers of everything He has ever done; He died, we died in Him; He was buried, and we’re buried in Him; He rose, and we rose in Him; He ascended, and we ascended in Him; He is seated, and we’re seated in Him; He’s coming, and we’re coming in Him. We’re identified with Christ and He’s become our environment. He is the ground on which we stand. He’s the air which we breathe. He’s our element. He’s the vine, the true vine.
Churches mentioned in the Bible are in Christ Jesus. They’re found in Christ, preserved in Christ, saved in Christ, sanctified in Christ, rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus, made perfect in Christ Jesus. Our ways are said to be ways in Christ Jesus. Our conversation is now in Christ Jesus. Our faith, our hope, our love is in Christ Jesus. We’re told to think in the Lord, walk in the Lord, labor in the Lord, suffer in the Lord, triumph in the Lord, and everything is in the Lord. I’m to receive you in the Lord. You are to receive me in the Lord. I’m to forgive you in the Lord. You are to forgive me in the Lord. “Wives, submit to your husbands in the Lord.” “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” What is all this “in the Lord”, “in Christ Jesus”? We put on Christ, and He’s our environment. The truth we hold is the truth as it is in Jesus. God’s will has become God’s will in Christ Jesus concerning you. Everything is in Christ. Why? He’s our environment. When we die, we die in the Lord. We sleep in Jesus. Those who are dead are in Christ. It’s all in Christ Jesus. When He appears, we will appear with Him in glory, in Christ Jesus.
He has literally become our environment, our life, our element in which we live and move and have our being. The gospel does not just give us new information about a covenant. The gospel informs us about our Life in Christ Jesus. It remains for us to draw from Christ our life, our environment, our element; to abide in Him. Then we’ll begin to learn our capacities and our possessions and our responsibilities and our duties and our destinies, how we relate to God, how we relate to people, how we relate to heaven, how we relate to earth. Oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, the fullness of the wonder of that truth, “I’m the true vine,” and all that’s included in that, everything is in Christ Jesus.
I wonder if you’ve ever seen that idea that Christ is your environment? My son, Daniel, thanks to Rick Baker, has taken up a sport called diving. You should see him in his gear. Talk about a strange looking guy. His feet look funny. He wears a rubber suit. He’s got a strange tank on his back. He’s got strange gloves on his hands. He’s got some strange thing over his face, and he walks really slow and funny, with a big belt and big things on. “Where are you going, you strange creature?” I’ll tell you where he’s going. He’s going to an environment where he doesn’t belong and that is not his own. He doesn’t belong down there with the fish and the lobsters. So, do you know what he’s got to do? He’s got to take his environment with him. So, he looks a little strange, and he loads up with his environment to go down into this strange environment.
Do you know what a Christian is? He’s somebody who lives and he doesn’t belong here anymore. It’s not his element anymore. You don’t read in the Bible Paul saying, “I am in prison.” You never read that. Do you know what you read? “I am in Christ in prison.” You are not in prison, and that’s why he could be so happy there. Do you know why? It’s because he carried his environment with him. That guy was always absent from the body and present with the Lord. Every time you look at Paul, he wasn’t in trouble, he was in Christ in trouble. He wasn’t in the sea; he was in Christ in the sea. He took his environment with him, and so can you, and so can I, and the wonder of living in this new environment called Jesus Christ, “I’m the true vine.” What did He mean by that?
I’ll tell you what He meant; He meant that I’m the vine and not you, and He also meant I am the vine and I’m your environment, I am your element, I am your life, and everything you do is going to be from that.
I read a little further down and it sort of shocked me. It said, “If you abide in Me and I abide in you,” I expected it to say, “You shall bear fruit.” It didn’t say that. It says, “If I abide in you, and you abide in Me, you ask what you will, and I’ll give it.” What is that all about? Prayer. I’ll tell you, God made organic life and He made the environment, and He made the organic life to receive. That’s all it does; it just receives the environment. It just takes. The environment is the great giver, and the organic life is just the great receiver, and it just takes, and it never even asks. God says that’s because organic life is going to pass away and the environment is going to pass away, because that’s just a picture. The reality is, “I want you to have Life, and I am your environment, and that’s not going to pass away.” One of the most wonderful things—what is faith? It’s the Christian reaching out for his environment; that’s all faith is. It’s so beautiful that now we can talk to our environment. If you abide in Him you can talk to Him, and say, “These are my needs,” and He provides. This is a marvelous thing.
We need to understand what it means to live from that, but tonight, may God help us to see, “I am the true vine,” and you are not the vine. “I am the true vine. Everything I created the vine to picture is found in abundant fullness in Me. I am your Life, and I am your element, and I am your environment.” You can carry Me, and they’ll look at you and say, “What a strange way he walks, so strange, peculiar people,” and you’ll Live and you’ll Live because you’re connected to another environment, and your conversation and your life/Life is in Him. I pray that God would teach us how to live in our environment, how to move in our environment and how to exist in our environment. We’re not doing it; the church is on life-support. They haven’t learned to live from their environment. “They’re sick, they’re fainting and they’re dying all over the place, because they haven’t learned that You are the true vine and they are the branches, and “I’ve made it that way on purpose. I put it as a picture,” and we miss it every time we turn. God grace us! God give us eyes to see it and begin to learn what it means to have Jesus Christ as our element, our environment, the True Vine. Let’s pray…
Father, we thank You, not for what we think we know this means, but for everything that You have inspired it to mean. Burn in our hearts indelibly the truth that You are the True Vine. Thank You thank You are going to do this in a way that far exceeds anything we could ask or think. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
