The Garden Ouch, That Hurt!: Pruning God uses pruning to produce abundant, healthy fruit in our lives. Pastor Kevin Syes July 15, 2012 Thousands of years ago farmers growing vines of grapes stumbled upon something they couldn t understand or explain. For years they tried to keep goats out of their vineyards, but they were perplexed when they discovered that the vines that had been eaten by goats actually had a better harvest than those which were untouched. They were baffled! Why would a goat eating away at a vine help produce more, not less? They concluded that clearly they had some magical goats on hand here. Clearly the logical conclusion, right? So paradoxically, they started inviting these magical goats to munch on their vines every year. And they kept having better and better harvests! Well, we know now that these first vine keepers discovered something significant, but it wasn t magic goats that helped grapes grow. No, they discovered the secret of pruning. And at its heart pruning is based on a kingdom principle, a foundational truth about our world and our place in it. That it isn t until a vine dies to itself and is pruned that is can be truly fruitful. That those who lose their life find it. We are going to unpack this today. But first I want to tell you about a strange experience recently. Have you ever expected one thing, and then find something different? It can be a strange experience. Not long ago I was sitting at a table and grabbed my water and took a big gulp, and as soon as I drank it, I realized I had grabbed the wrong glass and it was Sprite, not water. I had so expected water that I spit out the Sprite because it was just disgusting to me. Why? I like Sprite. It wasn t that. It was because in my mind I was thinking water, and when I drank it, my mind say hey, newsflash, that isn t water. The power of expectation. It can shape our experience. You can probably think of times this has happened in your life. Maybe you got in a cold shower and thought it was hot, or coffee not realizing it was cold your expectation of one thing shapes your experience. Expectation is powerful. It shapes our experiences. This is true for your whole life too. What you expect life to be about can shape how you experience every aspect of life. And one almost universal expectation that people have of life is that it is going to be comfortable. A lot of Christians believe this. Who has seen the Christian bumper sticker the safest place is the center of God s will? Doesn t that sound sweet? But I find this strange. It s strange because Jesus was in God s will and it took him to death on a cross! Despite this, we go through life with an expectation of comfort. It is our default position. We naturally gravitate to comfort. And so when something painful happens, it doesn t fit into our expectation framework. We are confused. It s like we think its going to be water, but it turns out to be Sprite. And we spit it out. That is why there are so many disillusioned Christians. They are disillusioned because their story didn t go like they expected.
You don t expect to get cancer. You don t expect for your house to burn down. You don t expect to lose your job. You don t expect to have trouble getting pregnant. You don t expect your kids to rebel and turn away from their faith. When these things happen, the best thing we can do is ask why?yet the Bible says in James 1: Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. This verse points to the same truth that those farmers uncovered thousands of years ago with goats the secret of pruning. Which is what our verse is about today. So, open your Bibles to John 15, that is where we will be sitting today. This is more than likely right after Jesus final meal in the upper room as he and the disciples were walking to the garden in Gethsemane for his last night before being arrested. And as he was walking along the road he came across this vineyard. This was a common scene for the disciples. They had walked along hundreds of vineyards throughout the years. The disciples knew grapes and vineyards like folks in downtown Seattle know coffee and cafes. But this time Jesus stopped and looking out over the vineyard with a heavy heart said this: 15 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 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. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 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. This is so rich. We are going to dig into this in a second here, but first let me ask you: who has been to a vineyard before? They are beautiful, right? In fact, I can hardly think of something more beautiful.last year I got a chance to go to wine country in California. We spent a couple days in Napa and Sonoma. This place is just breathtaking. Here is a picture from our trip. And as beautiful as it is, it s just a shadow of the heavenly reality it displays. Jesus was able to look at these common every day earthy images and see a deeper truth shouting to be conveyed. And he describes it here in this verse. Jesus starts this verse by saying something pretty peculiar. I am the true vine. What would you do if you were driving down the road and your buddy leaned over and said to you, hey, ahh, you know I am the true vine? Riiight. But what Jesus is doing here is making a statement of divinity. I am the true vine and you are the branches. He is saying I am your source of life. That your connection to me is so vital that your very existence relies upon it. And while you and I might both look like men made of flesh and blood, in the same way both a branch the vine are made of wood, still your very life is reliant upon me. He goes on and says while I am the true vine, my father is the gardener. Other translations talk about the father as the vinedresser. This is amazing because it gives us this beautiful Trinitarian reference and helps us see how God the Father and his son Jesus work together. Think about how dependent the vine is to the vinedresser. To plant, to shelter, to water, to prune. That is how dependent we are on God. Jesus showed us this reliance on the Father as he lived his entire life. Let me just say, if Jesus needed to rely on the Father in his life, I think we might need to rely on him also, right? The next reference to unpack here is the branches. You and I are the branches described in this verse. It s interesting too: while the branch is totally dependent on the vine for life and nourishment, the vine is dependent on the branches to produce fruit.
And producing fruit is what a vine is all about. Think about it. A vine is a very utilitarian plant. It does one thing well. It produces grapes. You don t hear about grapevine furniture. You don t get great shade from your grapevine plant. A grapevine isn t good for firewood. No, you plant a grapevine for one purpose and one purpose only: to produce fruit. In the same way you were created for this one purpose also: to produce fruit. That is what, according to this verse, your life is all about. We miss this point, and this is where we get frustrated and confused as Christians. See God is saying: your life isn t about your comfort your life is about bearing fruit for the kingdom and everything I do is to help that happen. Everything I do is meant to bring the fruit of the spirit in your life. Everything I do is meant to grow you into the likeness of my son Jesus. Everything I do is meant to bring others to see my love for them. Everything I do is to fashion and shape your life into something that bears fruit. See, when something in our lives goes wrong, where there is pain in our lives, we can only see the pain, but God sees the fruit he wants to bring as a result of that pain. God knows the secret that pruning, while painful, is how abundant fruit is produced. This verse describes two different types of pruning. It reads: 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. Let me just start by saying that the question is not if you are going to be pruned, but the question is when and why? Some experience pruning because their life is in sin. Maybe that is you today; you feel far from God. Maybe that is you and you know you are bearing no fruit in your life today. If that is you, God is going to prune you. He loves you too much to let you stay in your sin. He is going to take the dead branches of your life and cut them off. He is going to take the branches that are dragging in the mud and dirt of sin, and he is going get into the mud and lift them up and is going to clean them up and restore them. Maybe today you are in the opposite category. You feel like you are doing everything right. You feel like your life is bearing fruit. You don t think there is any major sin in your life. Guess what? God is going to prune you too. He is going to prune your already fruitful life and make it even more fruitful. Pruning because of sin is easier to see and easier to understand. It makes sense. Sin has consequences. There was a logical correlation. It s harder to see pruning to help people already close to God to bear more fruit, but the Bible is full of these examples. Examples of God shaping and pruning godly people through difficult circumstances. I could point to lots of examples, but the most obvious one is the apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 7 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Notice in this verse that Paul says the thorn in the flesh came from Satan, but he is petitioning God to remove it. See I think that there are lots of terrible things in the world that God can use to prune us. And
God isn t behind those things, but he can use them to shape us, to prune us, to produce more fruit. God isn t behind the cancer you got. He isn t behind you losing your job. He isn t behind whatever you current struggle is, but if we yield to Him, he can use it to shape your life to produce more fruit. So for Paul, God didn t give the Apostle Paul this terrible physical ailment. But God sure used it in Paul s life, right? In fact, Paul is one of the few men in history that you can look at and say that he had been so pruned throughout his life that literally there was nothing left except Christ living in him. His reputation, he wealth, his position, his health, his religion, his pride. All of it was stripped away, and what remained was a man that lived for one thing and one thing only: to bear fruit. Paul knew the one thing his life was all about. His whole life and all of his expectations of life where fashioned as a result of this. So what is your life all about? What do you expect from your life? And how does that expectation shape your experience? Is your expectation a comfortable life? A safe life? If these are your expectations of the Christian life, then you are going to be surprised because the idea that pain produces is a primary law of spiritual growth. So the next time you are struck by pain, what are you going to do? In every painful situation God is trying to get your attention. He is trying to prune you. Maybe you are in a good place today, maybe you are in a bad place. The question is always the same in every painful situation: do you trust me? Will you yield to me? Will you yield to the pruner? Will you allow me to bring you to greater abundance and fruit? Will you trust me with your family? Will you trust me with your finances? Will you trust me with your identity, your source of significance? And in different seasons of our lives God prunes different things. Pruning looks different for a mature believer compared to someone just starting out in the faith. And the question underneath it is always: Will you yield? Will you submit? Will you trust the gardener? When I first started working as a youth pastor at another church I planned this retreat for the high school students. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this retreat. I don t think I have ever prayed about something so hard. I was sure that it would be the perfect retreat. But as the days got closer to the time to leave, I started feeling a little tickle in my throat. By the time we left, I could hardly talk. I was so congested, drained, and sick I could hardly think straight. And I was upset with God. How could you do this? I did everything right! I prayed! I trusted you! I struggled through my first message on Friday evening. The following day I spent most of the day lying in bed feeling absolutely disgusting. But I prayed that God would be my strength in my weakness. What happened that night is something I still can t explain. Despite hardly being able to talk or even think straight, God used my message to the students that night in an absolutely powerful way. Many students that night came to Christ, repented, cried, and we saw God do something amazing. See, God was able to take a terrible situation and bring something beautiful out of it. And in the process I was pruned. I left that retreat different. I knew in a deeper way that God was in control. God pruned me that weekend to bear more fruit for him than I ever could have on my own. Friends, God wants this for your life too. He wants to take you through your pain and your struggle and help you see that on the other side is something beautiful. Something more beautiful than any vineyard on this side of eternity.
So may you leave this place today trusting the hand of the gardener. May you ever submit your life, your desires, your expectations to Him. And may you bear a harvest of fruit. A fruit that will never fade. I want to end the message here and give us room for communion, but friends let me just encourage you to allow God to continue to speak to you as we move into this sacred time. And allow God to prune you even through this experience today. PRAY Father, thank you. Thank you. Thank you that you love us so much that you won t let us stay where we are. That you lovingly shape, mold, and fashion our lives into something that glorifies you. Something that bears fruit. That is our prayer today. Allow us to bear fruit for you. Kingdom fruit. Allow us to abide in you, and you in us. Allow our lives to be total and complete communion with you. Every thought, every action, every desire. Take our lives and shape them into something beautiful. Works Cited Murray, A. (1997). The True Vine. Chicago: Moody Pres. Murray, A. (2008). Abide in Christ. Radford, VA: Wilder. Wilkinson, B. (2006). Secrets of the Vine: Breaking Through to Abundance. Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah.