Bayside Baptist Church

Guest (Male): Good morning! How is everybody doing today? Awesome. I got a "woohoo." Let's go! It feels so good. It is awesome. I am excited to share in God's word with you today. John 15 is where we are going to be, so you can open your copy of God's word and turn there. As you are turning there and finding your place, how many of you have adult children in the room? Raise your hand. I am going to ask for a lot of these hand raises today. Perfect.

I thought for the longest time it was just me. When my kids leave my presence, get in the car, and drive away, I feel like I have all these things I need to say. Drive safe. Watch your language. Work hard. The list keeps going. It keeps building and building. You get into that moment with this angst and you just want to say one more thing. Or how many of you are kids in here and you are like, "Oh my gosh, I wish my dad would just stop talking when I hit the door."

Where we are in John chapter 15, it is like this end part where Jesus is preparing himself and his disciples to go to the cross. He has these last things. There is this tension that is building in the text as you read through John where Jesus has these final things. "Oh, and remember this. Oh, and remember this."

That is where we are in John chapter 15. I am going to read 17 verses because I feel like we have to get this full picture. John 15:1-17 says: "I am the true grapevine 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 they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have 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, you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in 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 and 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 will 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 have told you these things so that you will 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 confides in his friends. Now you are my friends since I have 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."

The question that I want to answer today from the text is: how do we bear fruit? This passage centers around the idea that Christians will bear fruit. All the way through the text, we are going to bear fruit. This is not something new, but also in this, there is this word "remain." Some of your translations might use the word "abide." We have to answer what it means to remain and how to bear fruit.

The first point for us today is: you will bear fruit if you remain in Christ and keep his commandments. You will produce fruit in your life if you remain in Christ and keep his commandments. Look at verse five. "Yes, I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing." Remaining in Christ means to maintain a consistent daily connection with Jesus. You are clinging to him and you are living near to his presence, maintaining that relationship with Christ.

As I was preparing for this, I thought this is like Christianity 101. This is so basic. Remain in Christ. I got it. It would be very easy for us to just check that box and move on to stay in constant relationship with Christ. Then I realized this week and I want to ask you this: how do we remain in Christ? How do we do this? We have spiritual disciplines that we use in our life to help us stay connected with the Lord.

We just went through a spiritual discipline: 21 days of prayer. We kept the habit of prayer. We have talked about keeping God's word in front of us. I am going to ask you to raise your hand. Everybody get ready, because this is going to happen all throughout the sermon today. How many of you this week sought to be in God's word and sought to have a deeper prayer life, but you got thrown off? Everybody just look around the room. We are all rowing in the same boat.

Why does the enemy do this? Jesus uses this metaphor of the vine to stay connected to the vine. We are going to get to the vinedresser or gardener in just a minute, but stay connected to the vine. It is so vital in our spiritual walk. What does the enemy want to do? He wants to stump us up. He wants to remove that time alone with the Lord and take that away from us. This happens in our life perpetually over and over. We have to get after it every single day with relentless tenacity.

It is not just a "one and done" situation. Every single day, we need nourishment. We need to meet with God every single day. The beautiful part of it is God wants to meet with us. A holy God who created you and me and all that we see wants to meet with us. He has something new, fresh, and important to say to us every single day of our life. You will continue to hear this from us. Life Journal is so important.

This journal right here keeps me on track. If you don't have one, head out to one of the lobbies at the end of the service and grab one. They are free. We want to put that as a tool in your hands because you will hear this over and over. We want you to meet with God. It is not just a "check-off-box" thing for us to do in our faith. I have been here just over three and a half years. About a year into me serving here, we were starting a new year.

Jason pulled out... this was our first meeting in January. The staff does Life Journal together just about every week. We sit down and we are in God's word, praying and seeking God's face together. We are reading through the scripture text. As we met this particular January, Jason said, "Okay, this year, nobody is allowed to check the boxes." There are little check-off boxes as we read every day. I almost had an aneurysm.

I love to check the boxes. My hand goes to it. But I couldn't check the box. It wasn't about checking the boxes. He was leading us to say it is about you meeting Jesus. It is about you sitting and hearing from our Savior and connecting with him. It took me until about February to be okay with not checking the boxes. I am a checklist guy. It wasn't about that. He was teaching us and helping us to see this.

If we are going to bear fruit in our life, we have to remain in Christ. We have to participate in the spiritual disciplines that keep us connected with our Savior. Why do we do 21 days of prayer every year? It is important to put in front of you the importance of prayer and communicating with God. Paul says to talk to God daily and continually. It is not just in the morning and the evening. I start and end my day with the Lord in prayer, but all throughout the day, pray and seek God's face.

I can't even tell you how many times this week I would be driving somewhere and think it was a great time to pray. I would be praying and then I just get off track. Are you with me this morning? The enemy wants to steal that from you. He wants to take that from you. But we will bear much fruit if we remain in Christ. With relentless tenacity, we have to do this. I want to bear fruit in my life.

Remaining in Christ means to maintain a consistent daily connection with Jesus. We are clinging to him. We are attacked continually with this. The discipline of guarding these practices is essential to remaining in Christ. What are some other things? Worship. Why do we have worship every week? It is for the body and corporate worship to praise, but it is also to model for you to have worship in your life.

Why do we have opportunities for you to serve so you can use your gifts and abilities and what God has given you to serve other people? That is your spiritual act of worship. I lead our guest services team. Where are my people? Come on, I didn't even prime you. Where are my people? There we are. Hopefully you were met at one of our doors with a smile and a greeting. Can you raise your hand if that happened to you today? Let's go! That is their spiritual act of worship. They are worshipping when they do that. That is awesome. If you want to join my team, see me after.

You will bear fruit if you remain in Christ and maintain that daily consistent connection with Jesus. It often isn't these big events. Sometimes we think of meeting Jesus as these burning bush moments. But it is the consistent daily time in the trenches every day that God begins to do a work in your heart and in your life over and over again. It just builds in time. Jesus also says in verse five, "For apart from me you can do nothing." This is a beautiful picture of our union with Christ.

Apart from him, we can do nothing. There are so many of us who are living this life on our own and we are not asking the Lord for help. We are trying to make it happen on our own, whatever it is. But apart from Christ, we can do nothing. We have to have Jesus and stay connected with him. He also says in that verse, "You will produce much fruit." It is what God wants to do within your life.

It is not just a "one and done" kind of thing. How else do we produce fruit? Number two: you will bear fruit if you submit to the pruning process. Now it gets hard. There are two aspects to this pruning process. It is found in verse two. One is that he cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't produce fruit. Some of you are here this morning and you are weighed down by branches that aren't producing fruit in your life.

The vinedresser or gardener gives us this model of getting rid of that out of our life if it is not producing fruit. I was talking with Kip, our student pastor, this week and he said, "Man, I need to do a time audit." A time audit is where your schedule is so full you have no margin for the Lord to do any work in your life. Where your schedule is so full you have no time for the Lord.

I sat down with a couple of people this week. One guy was like, "Man, I have no time." We looked at Monday morning at 8:00. By the end of just Monday, he had five hours. I think we fool ourselves into thinking all these things are important and all these things we need to do. But if it is forsaking our time alone with the Lord, it is pulling us away from that vine. Apart from Christ, I can do nothing. He wants us connected with him.

You will bear fruit if you submit to the pruning process. We have to get rid of some things that are in our life. The second half of verse two is where it is really heavy and where I really connected with this this week. As I was studying, I realized it says he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. That means also cutting things that are good so that you can do what is best.

I grew up in South Florida. Our soil in South Florida is sandy. It is not like here. I had orange trees and pineapples. Where are my tropical people? Good. I love the oranges and the pineapples. My dad would take me out to the yard. We had several orange trees. The tree was producing these oranges that were about this big. He said, "We have to cut that off." I asked him, "Dad, it is producing. Why would you cut that?" He said it was going to help produce more.

At first, he just told me to do it. I asked him to teach me something. What happens is the nutrients come up into that tree. If it has only a certain amount of nutrients, it is being spread thin. Does anybody feel that this morning, being spread thin in your life? While it is producing some fruit, there might be some good things that need to go in order for the best thing, for the fruit to get big.

That is exactly what happened. We cut those branches off and the next season, there were these huge oranges coming off the branches. Not only were they huge, but there was a lot more of them. We helped that tree produce the best fruit that it could. I think sometimes in our life we think we have to do all these good things. We have to let some things go. We have to trim some stuff and it is not easy. It is actually very difficult.

Here is another picture for you. It is like this: we come to the Lord with a closed fist. Not that we are angry at God, but our fist is tight. "This is what God gave me, so I'm going to keep it and I'm going to have it right here." There is a positive thing with a closed fist when we approach God because it is something we won't let go of. We always have something we hang onto. But there are two issues with that.

One, you can't be generous and give with a closed fist. The second part is you can't open your hand to what the Lord wants if you are just like this all the time. I have had to do an audit to my time and my life too. We sometimes just hang on. "No, I want this thing. I have to hang on to this thing." The whole time the Lord is saying, "I want to produce more fruit in your life and in your ministry."

"You have to let it go." "But I have this. I'm safe. I'm good." The Lord is like, "Man, I want to bless you beyond belief if you just open that." By the way, the fruit is not just for you. The fruit is for other people. I want you to be generous and give that away. Verse two says he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. Sometimes you have to let go of what is good in order for what is best.

I did some studying about this whole idea of fruit. I went to the store and I bought some grapes. These are real, by the way. They look fake, don't they? They are real. Nice grapes. As I was studying Jesus's day, I learned that these grapevines would have trunks that are huge. The vinedresser would take two, three, or four years to learn how to work that vine so that it would produce the maximum amount of fruit.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were doing an anniversary trip to Niagara Falls and we were driving through Buffalo, New York. I didn't know this existed and I was blown away. There are all these vineyards that have been there for decades. They had trunks that were only like four to six inches around. They were everywhere. I started looking at trunks that are huge. These vinedressers study how to get that production.

Do you know what the production of those grapes looked like in Jesus's day? Some of our historians say the clutches of grapes were the size of a grown man. I am not a big guy, I'm like 5'6". But could you imagine a group of grapes this big? Look at how small that stem is.

Often what happens is we say, "But God, I've got my fruit. I did what you asked me to do. Here it is. I'm just going to hold on to this." The whole time the Lord is wanting to bless and to work. He is wanting you to grow and to take steps in your life so that you produce bigger and juicier fruit. He wants to do this in you, but we are holding onto what we have.

I was thinking what kind of fruit the Lord wants to produce in our life. A great passage is Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23. Some of you can quote it to me: "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." This is the kind of fruit that the Lord wants to produce within you. He wants to do this work in you.

We are going to go through this whole list, so I need participation. Who needs more love in their life? I need more love. I need to be more loving. I want that produced in me. How many of you are without joy right now? You have something going on and you are without joy. There are a few. How many of you want more joy in your life? Me too. This is the kind of fruit that the Lord wants to produce in us.

I am raising the bar on that guest services team. They were joyful this morning, weren't they? How about peace? Anybody need some peace in their life? We have all kinds of stuff going on, don't we? All kinds of craziness in the world and in our life. We need some peace and the Lord wants to give that to us. For this next one, I can tell we have all driven on 153. Does anybody need some patience?

Where are all my folks that have adult children? All right! Or little ones even. We need more patience in our life. We are so impatient. We get frustrated all the time. Sometimes we get so singular-focused on a task that we can't even be patient and see the folks that are around us, like when we go pick up grapes at Food City. How about kindness? Does anybody need more kindness in their life?

I want kindness to just ooze from my life so that people see Jesus in me. I want people to say that I am a kind person. But sometimes I am not. Our words get in the way and we say the most unkind things to the people that we love the most because we are so focused on what I want, not what God wants and what God wants to do in my life. How about goodness? We just sang about the goodness of God. Who wants more goodness in their life? Every hand needs to go up with that one.

I want God's goodness in my life! Bring it on! I want that as a part of my life. How about faithfulness? I want to be a faithful guy. I want to be a faithful pastor, husband, and dad. I want this fruit produced in my life. Gentleness? Sometimes we are so ungentle. We don't even think about gentleness as a fruit of the spirit. But gentleness is so essential to our relationships. That kindness and gentleness go hand in hand.

I don't even know if I need to say the last one: self-control. All around the building, I see hands going up. Love the participation. We need self-control. I did not have self-control at the Food City last night. I was picking up grapes and I saw Little Debbie's Boston Cream Pies. Did you know they make these things? I ate four of them last night. No, I did not. I did not.

We all need more self-control in our life. We need self-control with our kids, at work, with our spouse, and when we drive down the road. This is what God wants to produce in our life, but we are so busy over here. I know most of us wouldn't really say that we don't have time for God, but that is what happens. We are not connected to the vine.

We need to be connected to the vine and then we need to have the vinedresser do his work. This is where things are hard. We have to allow and submit to the vinedresser to do the work that he wants to do. There is trimming and cutting. There are all kinds of things that need to happen in our life, but a lot of times we just leave that there because it hurts.

If the plant could say anything, it would say that cutting hurts. That adjustment on the vine is not very fun. There are adjustments that God wants to make in our life. This is what he wants to do. Thirdly, you will bear fruit if you pursue a consistent prayer life. We just did 21 days of prayer and I want to hit this one more time. This doesn't stop just because we are done with those 21 days.

Your prayer life needs to be consistent every day. You will bear fruit. This happened to me this week. I was praying and asking the Lord to speak to me. He did and I needed to make an adjustment in my life. That is what happens in our prayer life. We are walking with the Lord and God points out something in our life and says we need to make an adjustment. We can't make any adjustments in our life if we are not seeking the Lord on a daily basis.

There is a guy by the name of George Müller. He was a Christian man that lived in the 1800s in England and he founded a bunch of orphanages and later on in life he became a missionary. This guy recorded in his journals over 50,000 answered prayers. Over 30,000 of those prayers were answered the same day. The discipline to record all of that is awesome. That is an example of a fruitful prayer life.

He was seeking God and laying things at his feet. He never asked for a dollar for his orphanages, but God provided because he prayed and asked. It is an incredible testimony. Verse seven says: "But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want and it will be granted." That is not like a genie in the bottle. As we pray, God makes adjustments in our life and he begins to move us and change our heart to be in line with his.

He begins to answer and we begin to see this movement of God in our own heart and in our own life. Lastly, you will keep bearing fruit if you fight for lasting fruit. I changed the wording on you. He says in verse 16, "I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit." Remember last week's message on "Pass the Baton?" Investing in the next generation is lasting fruit.

We spend our life investing into other people and watching them become grafted into the vine and then they begin to produce fruit. I was praying with a guy not too long ago over coffee and he prayed to receive Christ. He prayed and asked Jesus to be his Savior, picked his head up from that table, and said, "I cannot wait to tell my friends."

That is a new born-again believer grafted into the vine and then immediately producing fruit. Every time you read about somebody who meets Jesus in the New Testament, they are impacted by the gospel and want to go tell their family and friends. That is lasting fruit. As you invest, you produce more fruit that produces more fruit. As you submit to the pruning process, God stays connected with you.

It is going to be okay. It is going to be hard and you are going to have some healing parts to get through, but stay connected. Then the next thing you know, there is more fruit in your life. Love becomes a natural thing and joy overflows. You have patience in a situation you didn't have before. That is lasting fruit. God is producing more and more fruit.

As you step forward and say you want to serve the Lord, you produce that lasting fruit. You have jobs, neighbors, friends, and family that are not connected with the Lord. To go and produce lasting fruit in their life is what it is about. As God works in your life, he begins to do things with you. Again, the fruit is not for me. The fruit is for other people.

I had a conversation with a former student pastor of mine not too long ago, his name is Mark. He is in a bad place. After serving for years in ministry, he asked if his life mattered. Mark, your life absolutely mattered. Let's take the investment that you made in my life. Because somebody took the time to share the gospel with me and help me understand what it means to have lasting fruit in my life, I am here at Bayside now.

I got to share the gospel with this guy and this girl and this family because of you years ago. You never saw that, but look at what God is doing. I started naming other students who went to youth group with me. Look at all of this lasting fruit. God produced in you a desire to be fruitful and lasting fruit from the work he did in your life.

When it is all said and done, I want more and more of that. I want more fruit. I want to see God bless this place. I want more people who don't know Jesus to meet Jesus here. I can't invite them all, but you can. I want more people serving. You have skills that I don't have that the church needs. We are weak without you. We need you to serve and step forward.

I want God to continue to bless us to reach this community. Our new operations pastor, Jeff, and I were having a conversation about the thousands of people that drive by our church every single day that need to hear the gospel. God has put us in a place to reach people. But we are so busy holding on to one thing. We need to let go so our hands are open to whatever the Lord wants.

Let's be generous with our time and our talents. Help me and show me. I want to produce fruit too. We are designed and made for more fruit. What happens to fruit when it stays on the vine too long? It rots. It smells bad and it is not good for anything. That hits home even in my own heart. It is about people being changed by the gospel. It is eternity that is at stake. Let's pray.