Knowing and Growing - John 15:1-9

In the Knowing and Growing series here, we're going to be looking at, this is John 15, and here's a figure over in Israel, this is from Atal-Akish. Atal-Akish is the only Tel that still has the Assyrian siege ring. up there in all of Brisbane. But anyway, the reason for the picture is the vineyard there, which is done, of course, modern vineyard, but we'll look at differences between ancient ones and modern. So here's the context for John 15. Here is the context of John 15.

We have Jesus and the disciples that just observed Passover. Jesus had also begun to what we have come to call the Lord's Table. Some other places will call it communion or whatever. So the words Jesus spoke here were said after Jesus and the eleven disciples left the upper room, because at the end of chapter 14 he says, let us go from here. Then he started in chapter 15, this is right after they left.

So they may in fact be walking at night past vineyards, just as Jesus is talking about this. This is the probable upper room, or I'd say probable, possible, traditional. It's not absolutely certain that this is the location. The upper part of the structure, and we'll be showing this in the The upper part of the structure was built around 1200, but the floor and parts of the walls were original from the time of Christ. So they're moving towards the Garden of Gethsemane, and he tells them what's in John 15 and 16, possibly walking past a vineyard. So John 15 is a parable. Let me read it out loud. This is from the New King James. So it says, I am the vine, and my father is the vine dresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. So I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples." As we look at the passage here, this is a parable, right? So this is a parable. He's making an illustration using the vine and the branches.

So he says, I am the true vine. One of the reasons he would put it that way is that this vine analogy is used of Israel a number of times in the Old Testament prophets. Only thing is, it's an illustration of how Israel went bad. Bad fruit, bad vineyard. But he says, I'm the true one. And then also, the other thing that comes out here is this, I am, so he's going to the Garden of Gethsemane, I am the true vine and my father is the vinedresser.

So why is he calling himself the vine? In other words, you look at it, here's the vine, the branches are attached to it, and of course he's going to do something here that's perhaps a little surprising shortly, in that he's going to give a command to buy the meat. So he had been telling them all through the Gospel of John, I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world, I am the gate or door, I am the good shepherd, so this is the last time that he says, I am, of the seven metaphors. He says, I am, and then he has some metaphor of, I am the true vine. And he says this in the form that says, I being in fact God, am the true vine.

This is opposed to all the unfaithful vines that were used as illustrations in the Old Testament. Okay, so he's setting this thing up. Why is the father the vine dresser? Why is the father called the vine dresser? Because he's the one who determines how things are going to be done. Like a vine dresser who walks through throws and diligently checks, okay, are the leaves up?

Are they down? Is there disease? Is there not disease? What needs to be cared for? Do they need to be fertilized? Do they need to be cut back? Yeah. Okay, so the father is the vine dresser. He's the one who determines what gets grown, right? what gets cut away, disease, damage, broken, wrong place, you get sprouts coming out of the base, right? And so he's the one that goes and determines what gets pruned. What happens if we try to be our own vine dresser? If you look at it, it's the father's job to determine, okay, here's this pruning and that pruning and whatnot. What happens if we decide, you know, I kind of need to prune myself?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yes. The opposite of that is that we think, oh that doesn't need to be pruned, and he says, oh yes it does. Really, if you think about it, when Christians get into a mode of trying to play their own blind dresser, that's when we end up doing strange things. We end up doing strange, intense, and odd things thinking that somehow I'm going to fix myself. Well, it's like Paul says in 1 Corinthians that he doesn't examine himself, but he only lets the Lord examine him, because once you start examining yourself, it gets nasty.

Hypothetically speaking? Exactly. Hypothetically. Now, here's one thing. Ultimately, what is the bind dresser wanting to do? Yeah, he's looking for maximizing the fruit, right? All the pruning and checking things and trying to upgrade the soil, etc. All those things are designed to generate fruit. So it is the father who is looking for fruit production. Is fruit production our job? No. No. As a matter of fact, if you go through this, there is no command to produce fruit. That's what the Father is looking for.

But that's not our business. Now, there's one more thing. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, it takes away. And we'll talk about that takes away in a bit here. Every branch in me. So what is Jesus starting to talk about here? Being in Christ. Right? Being in Christ. Right? Every branch in me. Now, it says he takes away every branch that bears fruit.

He prunes it and may bear more fruit. One of the things that's important to recognize is in a rape vineyard, there are two seasons of pruning. You have the spring pruning and you have the fall pruning. And Jesus actually refers to both of those pruning times. So people, if they don't understand what that is, will misunderstand what Jesus is saying. So this first one is the spring pruning.

How about this takes away verse there? This is one where the translators will often say takes away, and then I'll look at it and say, but you've never worked in a vineyard, have you? Because taking the branch away is not what they do. Can you explain that a little bit more for us? This particular verse here I think is kind of a source for some people thinking that you can lose yourself.

Yes, that's exactly what we're going to get to. So here's an ancient vineyard in the fall season. Notice everything else is pretty barren and stripped back. And instead of what we would have today as wires that they put the branch on, they'll put rocks underneath the things to hold them up. Verse 2 is the spring season, time to lift the branches. So it's not takes away gone, but lifts up. So what they'll do is they will put, in this case here, a branch with a Y. to help support it, lift it up, they'll put those in place, they'll come in and put rocks underneath the branches. Because what do you want to do? You want to get the branches up off the ground, right? And so, because if a branch is on the ground, you don't cut it off, you lift it up, right? Yes?

I have a grapevine in my backyard and in the spring, you don't know which branches are going to bear fruit. Some of them do have little buds on them, but a lot of them don't. So you don't want to cut any branches off because you're afraid you might cut some fruit growing branches off. It's better, like you said, to leave them. Yeah, and there's certainly sprouts that come from down below and that kind of thing. You'll want to cut those off. But basically, you'll want to give all the branches every opportunity to be fruitful.

And then plus the idea of, this is John 15, right? In John 10, 28, five chapters earlier, Jesus had said, that, and they shall never, who may, it's not even remotely possible that they will perish of their own doing, middle voice. And so that's an absolute, no I'm not going to cut you off and you're not going to lose your salvation. And so he doesn't mean, oh yes you can, here are just five chapters later.

And so, what we see here, that he lifts up would also mean that the Father has a ministry of supporting and uplifting believers. To maximize fruit. That's what the Father is looking for. So, every branch that bears fruit, God the Father, who is a vine dresser, takes away, leaves alone, picks the fruit and runs. God the Father prunes so that it may bear even more fruit. The intent of pruning is maximizing the fruit bearing. Maximizing the fruit bearing. It's the Father's place to look for the fruit.

Do we get tempted to start looking at fruit? Oh, hey, look what I'm doing. It's easy for us to get looking at fruit without realizing that's the father's job, that's not our job. How do we define fruit? I mean, sometimes we might be looking at fixing up the old man or something like that. Yeah, there are some activities that are just a waste of time and worse, right? So, yeah, the father is the one who looks for fruit and he's seeking to maximize the fruit as he sees it. So the vine needs to be pruned in order to produce more and better fruit.

One place you don't want them is shoots coming out of the base. You're not going to get any good fruit coming out of there. And quite often, since it's so low, you're going to get the fruit hanging down into the soil anyway. So they'll go in and cut that off so that you don't get all the growth directed towards the base, but farther up in the vine and the branches. That's where you want the growth and the fruit. So here would be an example with a bunch of shoots coming out of the base. And what do you see up top?

Nothing. It's not happening. Why? Because all the resources and energy are going out of that base. So the vine, the main branches will always remain because only what is intended for bearing fruit will remain. You want to cut away everything that's unhealthy, that's not going to be fruitful. Cut away everything that's not in the right place. Everything else is pruned away.

So here's a modern grapevine and a wire trellis. And so you can see, here's one with all kinds of random growth all over the place. And you can see then, that would be pruned to be like the one on the right. permanent branches, that's us. And though they're permanent, they're kept there, that's us. All the other ones will be annual growth, but the fruitful branches will remain. So don't need to worry about the pruning of the vine and the branches. It's not our job.

This reminds me of something that happened years ago. So I wanted to grow tomatoes. First year back in Colorado because it was hot enough. And I planted these tomato plants and finally I brought my mom in because there were beautiful tomato bushes but there was not a tomato to be seen. She came and she kind of chuckled at me and she said, it's too close to your water source. So I had the most beautiful tomato bush, not one tomato that year. And I learned the hard way, there's a lot more to growing tomatoes than just planting them and saying, okay. Planting and watering. Yeah. And you can actually get too much water too. In addition to pruning, I discovered you can also overwater them.

So why? It's because the father is the vine dresser. That's his job, right? It's his to do. If I'm, you know, a lot of the things that we're going to end up wrestling with are because we're trying to do the vine dresser's job. We're going around looking for fruit. And actually, you think about it, Jesus says what? What's his command in here?

Abide in me. Simple? Yep. And so we're going to talk about that in a little bit here. The Father is the bind dresser, Jesus said so. So, can we self-appoint? We could, but that's not what his intent is. Leave that to the Father. The Father will not remove anything that doesn't need to be removed in order to improve.

So, John 15-3, you are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. A bind that has been pruned is referred to as clean or cleansed. You are already pruned because of the word that I gave you. Jesus had done the cleansing of these disciples by his spoken word up to this point.

They are out on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane. The Father would in the future prune the vine, leaving the fruitful branches among the apostles, and all of the apostles were fruitful to the very end. We are going to see today how Judas' place is replaced with Matthias'. We don't read anything more about Matthias in the Bible after Acts chapter 1. But he did go out, and as a matter of fact, James, John's older brother, was recorded as killed by the sword in Acts 12. All the other apostles ultimately ended up going somewhere else. Going somewhere else.

So, then here's John 15 and 4, abide in me and I in you. Question, could the disciples abide in Christ and Christ in them at the time that Jesus said these things? No, why not? Because Christ had not died and ascended, or resurrected and ascended. Yeah, and some other things needed to happen. The Holy Spirit needed to be given and all the things that were true of their position as church-age believers needed to come about before they could actually do this. It wasn't possible for them to do it right at that moment. Aside from which, I think they were really puzzled by the whole thing anyway. Okay, so in me, now this is an interesting thing.

You ever see a grapevine and the branches kind of hop off and then get back on and then hop off and get back on? You don't see that, do you? So do you have to tell the branches to stay in the vine? They just do. So this is something that's different, and that is he's got this illustration, but you don't see the vine dresser going up to the branches and saying, stay in the vine, stay in the vine, right? Stop jumping off. Yeah, quit jumping off, right? Quit disconnecting. So you don't see that taking place.

What he is saying here is something, using the vine and the branches analogy, that is different. So we have to decide to abide. We have to decide to abide. That's exactly what abide in me, in the imperative form. It's an appeal to the will. So the vine dresser makes all of the abiding decisions if the branches are going to remain. The parable of the vine, the branches, and the vine dresser says that those who believe in me, it is in Christ.

So when you have a statement of we are in Christ, that's about our position. If I have either a command like this, abide in me, if I have either a command or an urging, that's about our moment-by-moment condition. There's nothing that God asks us to do in our moment-by-moment condition that isn't already true of our position. So, this is all of what Jesus is saying in chapters 14, actually go back to 13 even, 13, 14, 15, and 16, all of that is aimed toward the church.

And what is true, what will be true of these disciples on the day of Pentecost forward. So a believer's ongoing relationship with the Lord is not an issue, that relationship is our unchangeable position. So any reading of this passage that looks like it's going to cut off your salvation or take you out of Christ or something like that is a misunderstanding.

The permanent branches are the ones that get trained up today, that you'd have them along a wire. But in those days, those permanent branches would either be made to grow and hold up, and the ones that hung low, they would lift them up. But those permanent branches, you don't go cutting those off.

So that fellowship with Christ, now think about it, is a branch? Let's compare a branch and a vine. Are they just remotely associated with one another? No, they're closely connected. They're intimately connected to the point where that connection, right at the connection point, it's almost hard to tell, you know, is this the vine or is this the branch? It is that intimate, that connection. So part of what this is saying, too, is talking about spiritual intimacy with the Lord. spiritual intimacy with the Lord, being quite connected. A branch that is connected to the vine, what are some of the different ways that you would describe that relationship between the vine and the branches?

Vital for life? Vital for life. The branches are quite dependent upon the vine. For what? Yes, for nutrients. There's nutrients coming out of the soil and water coming out of the soil and the branches are absolutely dependent upon the vine. Well, and the stability of the branch is dependent on how it comes off of a vine.

So we have a position of dependence. We have a position of intimacy, intimate connection. I was going to say they have the same kind of life. It's grape life, not tree life. Yeah, same kind of life. Alright, so there's this intimacy, there's dependence, and can you think of any other description? Unity? You don't find the branches getting in some kind of a squabble with the vine, right? Or even the other branches. Yeah, the branches aren't swatting each other. Usually not. Yes, typically not.

Now, abide in me and I in you. Now, in our position as believers is Christ in us. So it's abide in me and I in you, but neither of those things could they have done right at that moment. Why? They lack the position. They lack the position. Here Christ was walking beside them, Abide in me and I in you. What does that mean? They were probably wondering and later on they would figure this out. So Jesus is talking about that moment by moment. Why is it important to abide in Him and He in us? Are those just the same thing, or are they different? They're different. If I am depending on Him, and He is in me, then His life is evident through me, because it's not me doing the depending. It's not me doing the living.

This is Galatians 2.20, right? It's no longer I who live, Christ who lives in me. So right before this passage, John 15, and if you go up to 14.28, is that right?

No. 14.27, at the end of that, it says, do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. And then the Lord just goes on to reassure them, and reassure them, And they don't quite know why he's reassuring them. He knows.

And then he jumps into, OK, I am the vine. You are the branches. Abide in me. I in you. And I think often myself and we forget that this is a comforting passage. This is not, oh, get busy. Am I abiding now? Am I not abiding? Am I sinning? Am I not sinning? It's things are wicked here.

Don't worry. He's just saying, don't be fearful. So where's our focus is a really good question. We get distracted if we try to be something other than the branches abiding in him. So is there a command in here Bear much fruit. Get busy fruit-bearing.

There isn't that in here. It's abide in me and that's it. It's that simple. And then this other part, and I and you. It starts to help me see the concept that Christ is a new reality or that is our reality and this earthly life is not so much. Our spiritual relationship with God is more real than our physical reality. What Craig just said, a honer says something very similar.

He calls it the sphere. Calls it the what? Sphere. We live in the sphere of. Right. I mean, that's what I believe Craig was just saying. So our focus is to be on him. It's going to look like ongoing fellowship and dependence and intimacy with him rather than being fruit focused. Gayle? Life is located in the vine, not the branch. And so is nourishment. Water and nourishment are coming up from the roots, right?

So John 15.5, I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Okay, apart from you can't do anything, abide in Him and He in us and bear much fruit.

Yes? The ranchers that are pruned, do they represent non-believers? Or what do they represent? A part of it is just to look at vineyard practice, right? And essentially the Lord will prune things in our lives in order that we are more fruitful, the Lord will do the pruning. However, that's not a loss of salvation. It's things in our lives, in our minds, in our hearts, that the Lord, the Father is going to deal with.

Could it have the sense of being at home in? Like a synonym of trust or faith almost? Yeah, I think when you say abide, he's using the, this is the vine and the branches analogy, right? Abide in me. Let's ask this question, is there ever any parallel with, say, the home, the dwelling for Christians?

And I think the answer is yes, but that's found in other locations. This particular illustration is not a home illustration. It's the vine and the branches, our relationship with Christ. I could be very wrong in this particular analogy, just in the context of what's happening, rapid fire.

I don't know if this is so much, here's our home, as here's where our mind and heart belong while we are... Well, first these guys. I mean, the apostles, they didn't even know what was coming ahead, but the Lord was warning them. And then they lived decades under huge persecution and such. And so when I look at this in context, it seems like it's more okay. They know where their home is. This is on the ground work. frightening, terrifying, dramatic work, the Lord saying, just abide in me, I in you, I'll give you my Holy Spirit, it's going to be good.

They probably didn't feel that at that moment, and I could be off base. So, I am the vine, not just any vine will do. Not just any vine will do. Is it possible we could abide in something, someone else? Heck yes. Oh yeah, I prefer myself. Our dependence can be elsewhere, right? We can have an intimacy and a dependence and a fellowship that's elsewhere and not with Christ.

I like my vine costume. Pardon? the world. I guess I'm kind of looking at the vine and the branches and then looking at other vine and dependency on something else. I guess that's part of our growth is to learn that we are attached to the vine and Christ in our position, and part of our growth is coming back to that.

I don't know about anybody else, but I need to be reminded quite a bit. Yeah, abiding me and I and you, I'm quite convinced that they just had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. First of all, they just couldn't do it. And what do you mean, abide in me? You're right here. Right. And how am I going to abide in you? I mean, just the verbiage. How am I going to abide? Do I do that?

It isn't until we get into later New Testament truth that all of a sudden, oh, that's what that's talking about. And largely, it's in the epistles of Paul. Not entirely, but largely, it's in the epistles of Paul where that comes out. So if you believe you are a permanent branch, this is not a threat to cut you off. If we have fellowship, independence, and intimacy with Christ, then fruit bearing is the result.

But it is not our responsibility, nor our focus. So, you can do nothing. Jesus is coming, look busy. No. There is no sense in our suddenly stepping into action as Jesus is coming because He's coming and He hasn't been around. This isn't what this passage is about. This is fellowship and intimacy with the Lord right now. And not busyness. Not just activity. Unfortunately, all our devotion and efforts and activities will be fruitless. You can do nothing, you cannot produce fruit without me. And apart from me, there is no fruit production going on.

Getting busy for Jesus. I've come across parents that have thought, well, I'm going to keep my kids so busy that they can't get into trouble. And no, that doesn't seem to work. And then, or they'll be pastors saying, but we've got something every night of the week, and so we've got to keep everybody all busy and keep everybody coming to church so they just don't have time to get out and get in trouble. False.

So just activity and busyness and pursuit of fruit, those aren't what the Lord's looking for. So John 15, 6, if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up. And they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. So what was he talking about?

This is, you've got your permanent branch, right? And then you've got the branches coming off of that that are annual, right? Snip, snip, snip, snip, right? So this is the fall pruning, right? Late season pruning, fall pruning. The first pruning is the spring pruning. This is the fall pruning.

This is another one that has plagued me a long time. It says, if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away. That's always seemed to me to be, if you don't get busy, You ready? Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people take it that way. Because abide is a conditional thing. I mean, it's not a positional thing. It's a conditional thing. And so that leads to that conclusion.

So is this meaning, I'm going to go back to that. So is that meaning that we, our relation doesn't, like our position doesn't Our position does not get changed, but our condition will? What is that? What is the cutting and throwing and drying up? Okay, so our position, in other words, we're a permanent branch. Okay.

But there are parts of that permanent branch that have branches coming off of it, and those will be. cut back fairly severely. Oh, so like the unfruitful parts of me and all my nastiness get thrown away. And there's something else I think to, so verse two is the part that we saw earlier and that's the spring pruning, right? Verse six is about what was done in the fall after all the fruit has been taken from the vines for that season. And it's cut back pretty severely. But you still keep the permanent branches. Got it. Thank you. Could that be the same as the wood hands double? So now you're making the right connection.

Because, some have thought verse 6 is about loss of salvation, but as we've said, that can't be what Christ is telling us here. But this verse fits with 1 Corinthians 3, 10-15, which tests a believer's works. Which tests a believer's works, and what happens, you get some things remain, gold, silver, precious stone, and other things, wood hen stubble gets burned away. I can see where you mean that you have to understand the vineyard and keeping of the vineyard, and what is a branch and what is fruit. And also getting the distinction between verse 2, where you get the spring pruning, and then this verse here, 6, where you get the fall pruning. And you're going to cut it back pretty severely, but keep the permanent branches.

So this is parallel to that 1 Corinthians 3, 10-15 passage where everything is getting tested. Does that mean you're going to get burned? No. It's testing the works, not you. I know a lot of times I've had in reading these kinds of verses, had a sense of loss, in a way, that God's being mean to me, and hard on me, things like that.

But actually, I think these suckers are annual things that grow up that they don't have a part, actually, in production. And therefore, they're unnecessary. in my life to fruit production. And I want fruit production. So it isn't as if God is fulfilling what my heart wants. He's not taking away from me.

And I'll have to ask you in depth, in six, that anyone is a It's not a, it's an indefinite. You know, certain just means generally certain it can be a person or a thing. That's where it changes in six. So up to that, it's you, you, me, you, me, you. And then when you get to the part, if anyone, it's an if generally a one of something.

Does that, but I'm going to show you more, but I wonder if that helps a little bit, just the language seems to go from the very specific to, okay, now we just went into the if, and the more general conceptual working. So I don't know if that helps. Because it, I mean, it does sound like a person. Yeah. If you're not abiding, then. I mean that's very much how it reads in the English.

Okay, so here's 15, 7 and 8. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. Now, is this to us or to the apostles? It's the apostles, right? Does the Lord say that he's going to give you everything you wish? No. I'm so thankful. So my father is glorified by this that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

So let's talk about this because this is an area where Christians get a little confused when you use the word disciples. So, what you have in the back part of your handout is one that says the history of the Greek word for disciple relevant to the New Testament. And what we'll do is look at stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, and stage 4 simplified and summarized on the first page. If you wish to get more detail, then I've got three more pages to give you detail. But here's the deal. Matetes, basically means learner, derived from Manfano to learn about 500 BC, applied first to trainees in the Greek pagan religions and then to trainees under the Greek philosophers. So it was completely a pagan word. Stage 2.

As the Jews began developing traditions regarding rabbis and disciples, they generally continued to call them rabbi, great one, and talmidim, disciples. Those are the Hebrew terms. They understood, however, that the Greek word for talmid was mathetes, but they would use rabbi and talmid, and not generally the word disciples. The traditions regarding a rabbi and his disciples, focused on the Torah, were still developing by the time Jesus began his earthly ministry in the summer fall of 29 AD. He shortly thereafter began calling his disciples. Jesus followed some portions of the rabbinical traditions and also broke radically from those traditions in other respects.

Jesus said, He would say things like, unless you da-da-da-da-da-da, you can't be my disciple. And he would also say things like, well, the word yoke, take my yoke upon you, that was usually used for the law. So he used some rabbinical terms. But he said some things, and did things, that no rabbi would ever do. When he would say, you know, Egoi me, I'm God. The Father and I are one. No rabbi would ever do that. No rabbi would say, my father.

So Jesus would follow some traditions and then completely break from others. Just radically different. So here it is. Jesus, for example, invited his disciples to follow him. And that was typically what was done. So Jesus did some things that were just like all the other rabbis did. And then he did other things that were radically different that no other rabbi would do. So you've got that Jewish rabbinical and disciples Talmudian system. Now, stage three.

In the days before his crucifixion, in preparing the disciples to head up the church, the body of Christ, Jesus told his disciples that they were not to be called rabbi. See, among the Jews, every disciple wanted to be like his rabbi. And then turn around and be a rabbi.

Do you use the words apostle and disciples interchangeably? No. And the reason is that a disciple is a learner and an apostle is a special messenger. The disciples in the passage we're going to be looking at here are going from being disciples to soon being apostles. They didn't actually get sent as apostles. until the day of Pentecost. So then where it says Jesus is talking specifically to the apostles here, so that must be after Pentecost then?

In this context, in Matthew 23.8, that was before his crucifixion. So then in the time that followed the establishment of the church, believers were immediately called disciples. So this is different. Jesus, under the rabbinical system, had to invite certain ones to be his disciples, right? But the practice in the early church starting at Acts chapter 6, the practice was to call someone a disciple right away, right when they believed. Male, female, and there wasn't any invitation, it was simply you were called a disciple. So now, here's the interesting thing.

They are called disciples as soon as they believe, regardless of being younger or older in the Lord, male or female, Jew or Gentile, from Acts 6.1 to 21.16. The word was never used again in Acts or the rest of the New Testament, likely resulting from the meeting between Paul and James, along with the other Jerusalem elders, from May 28, 57 AD. That date. So, stage four, and this overlaps with the end of stage three, and will continue on until the day of the rapture.

All of the disciple-making activities of the apostles as recorded in the letters from the apostles and their associates, teaching, being an example, following an example, etc., were ultimately directed towards making disciples so as to be Christ's disciple.

If I were to disciple someone, The idea is not to have them end up being my disciple. Not really. If I disciple someone, I ultimately want them to be Christ's disciple. So here, abide in me, and I in you, and it glorifies the Father to bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples, direct disciples of him. So that's ultimately what we're doing here at Holly Hills. We're not here to have everybody a Vern disciple or a Mike disciple or a Roger disciple. It is for all of us to appoint people to be disciples of Christ. To learn Him. So this is key, when you talk about abiding me and I in you, you are going to learn him. So that's where we talk about knowing and growing. The knowing part is we learn him directly, personally, specifically. And anything that we do here is ultimately aimed in that direction.

So, when we see disciples in the Gospels, that's not about us. That's about the Jewish system. In that sense, Jesus was a rabbi, and people did call him rabbi. But, here we have this relationship directly with the Lord. Paul will write and he'll say, follow my example as I follow Christ. But he's doing that because he ultimately wants them to directly follow Christ and to be his disciples. His disciples. So that's key. So anyway, the rest of this has more detail to that. But that's the basic idea, is oftentimes we don't look at these four stages and we kind of, OK, here's some things about disciples and the Gospels, and that's not for you.

And why did the word quit being used when Paul got back from his third missionary journey and talked to James, and then that's it? never used again. Remember stage one? As Paul went out into the pagan cultures, if you said mathetes, the Greek word for disciple, what would people think? The pagan trainee, the Greek philosophers, that's what they would think. And so here's Paul coming back and saying this isn't working. But it doesn't mean that disciple-making is the problem.

It's simply the use of the Word. Okay, let's pray. Lord, we do just ask that You would teach us the truth of this passage, abiding in You, and that's our focus. teach us to simply focus on you and depend upon you and have an intimacy with you and not get distracted by looking out for fruit and looking out for you know, oh, here's the pruning but just realize that the Father is a blind dresser and He loves us. He loves us immensely. And so we just give you thanks. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.