Sunday, January 23, 2022 - Disciple: The Vine

Last week we began to defined discipleship.   We discovered there are three things that will be true if you are following Jesus, if you are truly a disciple—You will be learning about Jesus, you will be living like Jesus, you will be leading others to Jesus.  Learn.  Live.  Lead. 

 

Today I want to take you to one of the most important passages on discipleship in scripture.  John 15—READ.  John 15 is an allegory.   Allegory is a story in which everything has meaning.   Jesus even explains the allegory.   Jesus tells a story of a vine, a vine dresser and the branches.   

 

In this allegory all the main characters are clearly identified.   In verse 1 Jesus identifies himself as the vine.    Then there is the vine dresser—God the Father.   The role of the Vine Dresser is to maximize the impact of the vine.   I want to call your attention to verse 2 to the words “Takes away” from the Greek AIRO.   The primary definition is “to lift from the ground.”   Which may be truer to the text since the job of the Vine Dresser is to nurture the vine.   Rarely did a vine dresser ever cut away a vine, but would lift it and tie it to the trellis in order to train the vine.  This was called “training.”   Their secondary priority was to snip shoots from the vine called pruning.    You will understand why this is important when we get into the message.

 

Then there is the branches—look at verse 5—I am the vine, you are the branches.   This passage is not about salvation, this passage is about growth in our relationship with Jesus.   This passage is about following Jesus, what it means to be a disciple.   Jesus is going to address our position, production and purpose in the kingdom.