"Apart from Me, You Can Do Nothing” | John 15:1–17

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Good morning, good morning. We talked on that through good morning, good morning to you and you and. You good job. Good that's everybody's favorite. Something that should be. Maybe I should incorporate like the Bible Guys, the Bible guy right, who knows? Yeah, that'd be great. But anyway, you are the Bible Guys. We want to welcome you today and we are in the middle of a series called what If Jesus had a podcast? And today Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing. That's a big, a big one. Yes, that's a big. We're gonna find out what he has to say about that, but first we have a brand new segment. It is because Ray is using all of her gray matter to try to figure out how to make a compelling seconds nice. Right, this is a brilliant idea. So you like you like like board games and stuff? Of course I love you love like taboo, especially like word board games. This is this is our family thing. We we love zar bag game Night what we call it. In fact, we have a family in our church. Uh uh. Anyway, it's a great family, great friends, and uh they actually bought us an actual thing that was customized. It says zar bag game night. Yeah yeah, and it has all the all the stuff in it. Whoa super cool. Well, so today we're doing taboo, right, only it's theological taboo. So that means I have to describe a Bible concept of theological concept concept without using forbidden words. Okay, So there'll be forbidden words, yes, which means if you're watching on video, hopefully what we can do is place them on the screen right here, just knowing that Jeff cannot say these okay. And and I haven't thought about this yet, okay, So I just looked at it a second ago, and I have no idea how to do this. But you're allowed to speak in sentence, so so yes, I am allowed to speak in sentences. But the words that I'm forbidden to say make it very difficult to speak of the So this is a theological idea. So listeners, race against me and see if you can beat me. Okay, this is a theological idea. Yep. Uh, let me see. Okay, Okay, there's the dad, the kid, and the dove, the. Trinity, Yes, and the dove, the dove. There you go. I got it. So so I had here's the words. I wasn't allowed to say three because Trinity, three and one say that. I couldn't say God. I couldn't say father, son or spirit. Wow. Yeah, so that was a tough one. Good. Well, the dove was brilliant. Yeah, there you go, because. I wouldn't have got without that. Yeah, so you're like, dad kid dove. I'm like dad kid dull. I almost said holy ghosts. That is what I almost said to because I could have said that. One, but but no, holy was on the list. No, No, I couldn't say three godfather, son, spirit, Oh holy. So I could have said holy ghost. Yeah, I could have said the Dad, the kid, and the other one, right. Which I would have known. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because that's how most Christians live, is the Father, the Son, and the other one. Most Christians don't really spend time with the Holy Spirit. So hey, well there you go. I liked that one, yes, man, And and I mean we blew through that. One because we're well listen, we could. Expand on theological minds. We could expand on it by saying this, did you know I know you know this, but did all of our listeners know that the word trinity is actually. Not in It is not in the Bible, right, The concept is, yes, but not the not the word. So trinity is a word that Christians created to explain what the Bible says is true about God. So the idea that we have a triune God, a God, one God, three persons, right, and God describes himself this way and so it all. Sometimes people panic, go, you know, because they'll hear somebody on Discovery Channel go, well, you know, early Christians didn't believe in the trinity. Trinity. The word trinity is not even in the Bible, right and oh, oh my goodness, it's not in the Bible. Oh well, that's terrible. It must not be real. Neither is the term vicarious suffering of Christ, right right, correct, But that's still a true theological term, that's right. So when we assign a word like the vicarious suffering Christ means that Jesus died in our place. It's the substitutionary death of Christ. He died in my place. Vicarious means on my behalf or on the behalf of others. So the fact that Jesus died on your behalf, on my behalf. The theological term is the vicarious suffering of Christ. Which by the way, is this Sunday. But the fact of the Bible is Jesus died in your place. That's the fact that it's the same. The term for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit being three and one is the trinity. That's not that word's not the Bible. It's the theological term we use to talk about it. But the fact of it is at jesus baptism, the Father's voice spoke from heaven while Jesus was in the water, and the Spirit descended upon him like a dove. At creation in Genesis chapter one, God in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and then it says that we find out Jesus was where he spoke. And we find out in Genesis, or in John chapter one, Jesus was the Word, and Jesus created everything that existed. And in the book of Genesis chapter one it says, and the Spirit of God hovered over the deep. So literally, in the first few verses of the book of Genesis, you have of the Father. So the fact that the word trinity does it, it's just a functional theological word that we use, right, But the concepts are deeply rooted in the truth of scripture. Paul believes in the Trinity. Jesus believes in the Trinity. Obviously, James believes in the Trinity. Jude believes in the Trinity. The Gospel writers believed in the trinity. Uh, it's it's deeply rooted in scripture, even though the term trinity is not there. So yeah, yeah, so you don't have to freak out about it. The fact that terms not in the Bible. It's just a theological word that Professor's made of so that we can explain. So it's just how we explain the fact that God is three in one, that's right. Yeah, So hey, that was really cool. Yes, good job, Chris. It's it's your theological astuteness that helped you figure out. That's me. You said, the dad, the kid, and the dove. And I bet you somebody beat me to it. Yes, I bet you somebody who's out there said. And without me, you that have never won that game. And did you also know Trinity is the name of Neo's girlfriend in the Makers. So without me, you could have never won that game because apart from me, you can do nothing, which is the thing Jesus said. Jesus also said, apart from me, you can. Literally place yourself in the position. No just with this game. Yes, I know with you on this show, I. Can do nothing without you in this game. Jeff, that reds me too. Hey, that reminds me. God said the same thing about him. So yeah, yeah, that's right. So Jesus says the same thing. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you're new to the show, We're not trying to be blasphemous. We always just try to find the worst possible transitions from the silly segment at the beginning into the devotional part today. Right now, there's no blasphemy attempt here. Yeah. So in John chapter fifteen, we're going to be reading John fifteen one through seventeen. Jesus he says, I am the true grape vine, and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so that they will produce even more fruit. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I've given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. Yes, I am the vine, and you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I and them will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch in withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it'll be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father. I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my father's commandments and remain in his love. I've told you these things so that you be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow. This is my commandment. Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than 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 slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends. Since I've told you everything the Father told me. You didn't choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. This is my command. Love each other. Well, there you go. Yeah, there's a lot in there. Yeah, he covers it, cots the ground. Yeah, it's so great. And you know, if you're a farmer, especially man, is this illustration so deep and you understand it so well. But for those of us who didn't grow up you know, in agriculture, you know, it's not as rich as the first century listeners, right, who would have all been completely hands on with these kinds of things. You know. The closest I got was we used to when I was a student pastor with high school students and middle school students. Back then, we used to have a company that we would all glean off of called Youth Specialties. I remember you specially, Yeah, we used they were great. Yeah, So Youth Specialties had all these great books for youth ministries and you know, great ideas and such. And they had tons of ideas of how to plan and plan an event or yeah, games or engaging ways to communicate tough topics stuff. Yeah, it was great. And so they had this book and it was called Destination Unknown. Yeah I remember, Yeah, we did destination on those. So we we would do Destination Unknowns and we would have vehicles a lot of times, fifteen passenger vans sometimes like a big shuttle bus, and they would be you know, we had a small church, but we had a big youth group, so you know, the kids would come and let's just say we had like, let's just say sixty high schoolers or something like this. We would have all these vans lined up and when when they would show up on a Tuesday night for you know, we called it the next level. They would show up and they'd see these vans that every dy'd get excited because they know it's a d U kind of night, right, du big d big DU Destination Unknown. And we get in the car and some of our most effective things were I remember one time I took them and this was a brilliant It wasn't my idea, it was their idea, but I took them to a Porsche dealership, right, and we had this when it was all arranged, and these guys talked about how expensive these cars were, right, just the unbelievable intricacy and how much money would cost you and everything like this. Then we had somebody else, a financial advisor, who said just how incredibly expensive these cars were, more than the other cars that were just the same plastic and metal. Right. So we did all that in one location that we got back in the bus, and then we went to a junk yard, right yeah, and we had we we went, we went all the way back to the place where all the Porsches were, right yeah. And so literally he's like this junk you know this guy, you know, he's perfect, you know, he's from Atlanta, and he's like. Well, this is where all the porches are. He's like, here's your nine twelves and you're all these kind of things, right, and so he lines them up and literally we saw some of the same cars we just saw, only older versions and some that were just brand new that were wrecked. And and I'm like, okay, so how much So the financial advisor actually had this setup, so how much to buy that, and he says, oh, that's worth you can get that for three hundred dollars, right, And so we talked about you know, we're muff duff corrupt, you know, and thieves break in and steel. Right, put your treasures where your heart? You know, where your treasures your heart? That is great. We should do that on a Sunday here, dude, isn't it great. It's a great video, isn't it. It's a great video, idea great and so anyway, but that made a huge impact on the teenagers about, wow, everything that we see is going to eventually end up in the junkyard somewhere, right, So materialism is not the thing, right, And so it was just tremendously effective. Well, I did this with a great with a vineyard. So we we literally have this vineyard on the side of the road, which is very uncommon because it's not an agricultural area. But there's this lady who has this massive vineyard. I remember driving by and seeing we were working out there, and I pulled over and I said, hey, can we do this tomorrow night? And she says, Oh, I'm going to be just so exhausted because today and tomorrow we're working all day and we're cleaning up the vineyard. I said, well, that's perfect. Then I said, because it'll be perfect, it'll be perfect for us to walk through and you can teach us about vines and branches. She says, but I'm so tired. And I said, can you put a price on affecting the lives of sixty students guilting this lady into it? And she says fine, And so sure enough, man, we had these kids walk into this vineyard, and I'm telling you it was one of the most effective lessons because then we were able to sit there in the vineyard talking about the vine and the branches. This is what we taught. So my wife I was out of the country. I've told this story several times, but my wife buys a house while I'm gone. Right, Yeah, we've been looking for our house for a long time. So the backyard, you've been there. The backyard backs up to a forest. And when we moved there, I had noticed that we moved in December, but just before all the leaves started disappearing, I had realized that there were vines growing up to the tops of the trees, and there were a couple of trees that were losing, that were dying the things. So I got back in the woods and I realized somebody had planted or some somehow there were these grape vines that were climbing up to the top. And then what happens is, you know, the vine is usually you know, a couple inches around, yeah, a few inches around, but it puts out all these thin branches that come out, and then they put out these huge, like one square foot kind of leaves, and so they'll cover over a tree and cover the canopy will be the grape leaves will be covering, and they wind up killing the tree below that came at the sunlight the nets, and so I realized, man, I'm about ready to lose most of this forest behind me if I keep letting these grape leaves go. And so at first, all I was doing was cutting the cutting the branches and pulling them out of my trees. And that's what I was trying to do. And it was so hard, and I was exhausted, and I had spent a couple of days working at this, and then I realized this is dumb. I need to go find where the where the where the root is, where the where the vine is. Right, cut the vine and then the branches the dost. So it turns out there were nine vines, but it was thousands of branches, right, there were only nine, and so I went and cut those. So some of them I was able to get out of the tree. But right now, if you go there, all of them are dead. Even though I got a bunch of them out. We filled an entire dumpster with them. But all of them have died now because I cut off the vine. So all the branches are dead now and I got it out of the tree. Now they're all brittle and I can just pull them out. It's a lot easier all than last year when they were all still a lot And so Jesus says the same thing, that the power of the branches is in the vine. That's right, right, So it's when when we talked yesterday, was it yesterday we talked about the bags of money and that God was expecting a return in two days ago, that God respects a return on his investment. We feel like that means we have to muscle up and figure out how to do it right. Well, Jesus is saying, don't you understand the power of you as a branch, is in me the vine. Yeah, I'm the one that's bringing all the power to you, right, I'm the one that's it's flowing from me to you so that you have the ability to do what you're supposed to do. And your job is, he says, to bear fruit. Right, in the same way that before the investor said your job is to double my investment. Here he says, your job is to bear fruit. But this time what we discover is we're able to do it only when we're stay connected to Jesus as the vine. Yeah. And you know, as Christians, sometimes we get weary and sometimes we're you know, we can go a long time without praying to God or reading the Bible or feeling close or you know, listening to podcasts or going to church, and we feel like our relationship with God goes into a void. And if there's no power in our lives, if God's not producing in our lives, and God's not blessing, and we feel like, you know, all that's so disconnected. We have to realize, hey, it's because we're not connected to the power source. Right. We got to get reconnected with our relationship with our heavenly Father, that's where the power comes from. And that brings true even more so in ministry. So we're not just Christians, we're professional Christians, right, we get paid to do things this way. And so sometimes you can try to produce because that's what ministry is. That's what jobs do. They ask for results, and so in ministry there's ministry results that we try to sometimes fabricate in our own power. And we'll say, okay, you know, for instance, we're at this we're on this stage, and we're looking at these chairs, and we're probably even tonight, in a few hours, we're probably gonna have five hundred kids in this room because there's a kid's camp that's happening, right, and so somebody has to plan that. Somebody has to do it. And so you better you better make sure that if you're planning an event this big, you better be preyed up. Buddy. Sure, you better rely on the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God gives the increase, God gives the fruit. And that's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, you cannot do anything like this by yourself, right, You've got to be connected in me. I'm the vine. You are the branches. Apart from me, you can do what nothing, nothing, nothing nothing, So nothing good in me is going to produce anything, right, It's got to be through the power of the Holy Spirit. I don't know any of the translations of this passage that say anything other than you will produce much fruit. He doesn't just say his goal is for you to produce fruit or a fruit. He doesn't say some fruit or a fruit. Yeah, he says much fruit. So again, on occasion, we'll take shots from people going, oh, you're just all about the numbers. Right, there's a measuring word. Even in this idea of bearing fruit. The measurement word is much as opposed to some or a right. And God doesn't waste words. He's not just randomly choosing a word. Every translation I know says that God's goal for you is to bear much fruit. He didn't. He didn't. He didn't misspoke. He didn't. It wasn't misspoken. Yeah, yeah, right, he didn't just stumble through it like like you just did. Right, right, that's correct. Well, I wanted to say, I wanted to say, because you always use the word misspoke, but I don't say misspeak right anyway. He didn't miss no, I was I was teasing. It was funny that that came out. You were trying to talk about misspeaking when when when Yeah, it was fantastic. But God doesn't just randomly throw out words. Yeah, he only had thirty one thousand ors something versus he was going to ever give us in his word. And so he's not wasting words here. He's saying it a purpose and this idea of there's a quantifiable measurement and we will be quantifiably measured. This is why in this previous story, a couple of days ago, he gave one guy five, one guy two, one guy one, and then he said, good job, you turned five into ten. Not you took some and made it more. He didn't do that. He said, you took five turned into ten, you took two and turned it into four. Those are quantifiable measurements. And then now he says, even when he's talking on a farming level, God's goal isn't some fruit. God's goal is much fruit from you. And there's multiple kinds of fruits. Obviously, he eventually he gets into loving one another. That's a big part of it. We know the fruit of the spirit and Galatians chapter five love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, meekness, right, long suffering, all those kinds of things. So that's part of it. Then Jesus said, here and as my father glorified, that you bear much fruit. He says that the fruit of the righteous is the tree of life, and he that win his souls is wi the moble says, So there's lots of different kinds of fruit, and God wants all of it. That's what he wants. He wants you to produce as much as possible. And so then there is this difficult phrase where Jesus says, listen, you have to be pruned. So I went out a couple of days ago, it was a couple weeks ago now, and I had a tomato plant that had some extra branches that didn't look like they were going to produce any fruit. They didn't have any flowers on them, they were going to produce any tomatoes. And so I went and cut a bunch of those and got those out of the way. I did the same thing. I have some climbing pea plants. They're just about ready to produce, and there was some that were dying, and I cut some of those off, and all of a sudden, both of those plants just went like crazy, And so it's interesting. Sometimes there's things that are useless that aren't actually going to produce in our life, and God's going to cut those off. That's what pruning is, is you cut off the stuff that's useless that's not going to produce anything, so that all of the energy goes to the ones that are going to produce. Because if I got a branch here and it has four leaves, and I've got a branch here that has four leaves and a flower that's going to produce a tomato, what I don't want to do is spread that all the energy nine ways. These four leaves aren't going to produce anything in these four plus the flower. What I want to do is get rid of these four. Now I get all of that extra energy pushing towards this one, and it's going to produce more, right, more, The fruit is going to be better. And so God does the same thing. Sometimes that can be painful in our lives, and we just have to understand that all he's doing is he's making us so much better. We'll get through the pain He'll take us as long as we stay connected to Jesus, We're going to get through the pain. He'll heal us. But we will be so much more effective on the other side of that pain book that Bruce Wilkerson wrote. Man, I'm drawing a blank right now. Because I know with the Jabez thing did. But he also wrote something on this too, and I have it in my office. Anyway, I remember reading that little book, and I remember him talking about how when it says prune right, some branches are pruned. He said that it could literally be translated into lifting up the the lifting up and so he says, lifting up is an unusual phrase until you realize that part of pruning something could be taking branches that are like laying in the mud, branches that could produce right, but to lift up because vines have to be tended to write, and so you lift them up, wash them off, clean them up, tie them up. He said, sometimes that could be a part of the you know, pruning process and preparing process for tending to your to your vine. And I thought that was really. Interesting part of the cultivating of that, the. Cultivating yeah, because because you know, a lot of times we hear pruning, we think of the discipline and the and the harshness of it, which there's there's definitely that part of it. I would say the word prune nine times out. Of ten means to cut. Yeah, so, but I'm just trying to give everybody a lifeline here. Well Bruce did, yeah, yeah, Exactly's but. I thought it was interesting how he said, I just remember that word lift up and he said, he said that there's that's a part of this passage. And I thought that's interesting how pruning could be both harsh and gentle at the same time. And so I don't see it as harsh. It's loving. Yeah, yeah, for sure, it's not. So so I don't know that harshness. Kind of has a. Harsh only in the pain of it. Right. But but when it comes to hey, this is holding you back, let me, let me cut you loose from that, you'll heal from that, right, and if you have the right attitude, it doesn't cause a lot of pain anyways, Right, Okay, God's just removing that from me so that I can run faster, so I can do more, so I can have a greater impact. But Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing, and then ultimately he leads into I'm going to call you my friend. You're not minaemy. I'm telling you these things because you're my friends. But it is interesting he says, you're only my friends if you do what I command. You are my friends. Verse fourteen. You are my friends if you do what I command. So there's an obedience component to the friendship with Jesus. I'm separated from him. I'm not attached to him when I'm not obeying him, but I am attached to him. And this is just in your everyday life, the blessings, the power of God in your life. I'm not talking about going to heaven. Obedience doesn't get you to heaven, but the power of God in your life to produce fruit comes from obedience. And I find it interesting how just two verses later he says, hey, go produce the fruit, and then two verses later he goes, this is my command love each other. Yeah, which is interesting because you know, you would think that in that moment Jesus would talk about, uh, maybe something else. And I'm always I don't know why, but I'm always thrown back a little bit. How much Jesus commands us to love other humans. I don't know why, because I because for my entire life, I've always thought that. I've always thought he says, oh, the two greatest commandments are love God and then the second one is equally important, which is love others. And that always confused me. I was like, why, I know it makes sense to me to love God because I love God. But have you seen these idiots? Right, It's like, but people are sometimes really hard to love. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, and there are people well he knows that, yes, he knows it's hard to love people. He loves anyway, that's an important part of what bearing fruit means. Love each other. And then it's interest. He's talking about love, and right in the middle of love, he talks about it being a choice. You didn't choose me, I chose you, right, And so you have to understand that there's a choice when it comes to loving. There's a there's a choice in loving God, there's a choice in loving other people. And yeah, well, hey, that's our time, so hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the Bible. Guys,