“The branch cannot bear fruit of itself.” - John 15:4 How did you begin to bear fruit? It was when you came to Jesus and cast yourselves on his great atonement, and rested on his finished righteousness. Ah! what fruit you had then!
Do you remember those early days? Then indeed the vine flourished, the tender grape appeared, the pomegranates budded forth, and the beds of spices gave forth their smell. Have you declined since then? If you have, we charge you to remember that time of love, and repent, and do thy first works.
Be most in those engagements which you have experimentally proved to draw you nearest to Christ, because it is from him that all your fruits proceed. Any holy exercise which will bring you to him will help you to bear fruit. The sun is, no doubt, a great worker in fruit-creating among the trees of the orchard: and Jesus is still more so among the trees of his garden of grace. When have you been the most fruitless? Has not it been when you have lived farthest from the Lord Jesus Christ, when you have slackened in prayer, when you have departed from the simplicity of your faith, when your graces have engrossed your attention instead of your Lord, when you have said, “My mountain standeth firm, I shall never be moved”; and have forgotten where your strength dwells — has not it been then that your fruit has ceased? Some of us have been taught that we have nothing out of Christ, by terrible abasement of heart before the Lord; and when we have seen the utter barrenness and death of all creature power, we have cried in anguish, “From him all my fruit must be found, for no fruit can ever come from me.” We are taught, by past experience, that the more simply we depend upon the grace of God in Christ, and wait upon the Holy Spirit, the more we shall bring forth fruit unto God. Oh! to trust Jesus for fruit as well as for life.
Our Gospel reading has three primary messages. 1. Pruning
2. Fruit-bearing
3. Abiding It is interesting that the text discusses pruning as the first item. Here again the words from the Gospel, BIBLE "He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit." Jesus says that God the Father prunes the branches that bear fruit to allow the branch to do what? To bear more fruit. Vines left to themselves will sprawl in every direction and produce huge canopies of shoots, leaves and branches.
Unless that canopy is controlled, the vine will not yield much fruit. Pruning at first glance it may seem to be a counter-intuitive activity. For what you are pruning would seem to most as a very healthy vine. In fact, may look healthy but it is not bearing much fruit as it can.
This pruning is not punishment, it is done so that the vine can be even more productive so that it will be more fruitful.
Pruning sounds destructive, but it is actually productive!
Jesus said BIBLE: "I am the vine, you are the branches; those who abide in Me, and I in them, bears much fruit; because apart from Me you can do nothing." John 15:5