If someone has an apple tree and they cut a branch off and throw it onto the ground, how will it produce apples? Trees get their moisture and nutrients through the roots, and it carries through the entire tree, so if you separate a branch from the main trunk, it is separated from everything that sustains it and makes it grow. Cut off from nutrients and moisture, the branch will die.
It’s like if you covered a solar panel from the sun. A solar panel uses the sun to produce power, so cut it off from the sun and the panels don’t produce anything. They are “fruitless” so to speak, because they don’t produce any power.
Likewise, If we are separated from the Son, we cannot bear fruit. We need to abide in Him to bear fruit.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” John 15:1-5
If something is fruitful, it produces seeds that hopefully will grow up and someday bear fruit themselves as well. So when we as Christians abide in Christ, we can bear fruit by sowing those seeds of faith into people’s hearts.
When a mature fruit falls off of a tree, it contains seeds that can be planted to produce even more fruit. There are a bunch of apple trees in town near where we live, and we were told that many of them are there because when people would eat the apples off of that one tree, they would throw the apple cores into the woods. Some over here, some over there. Years later, there are apple trees scattered throughout town. If those branches that bore those apples had been cut off, we wouldn’t have all of those other fruitful trees today.
We need to abide in Christ so that we can bear fruit for Him. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. For us to bear fruit, we have to continue to grow with Jesus day by day. Our purpose and goal as a Christian is to spread those seeds of faith.
Trees are probably a more common sight than vines, so let’s picture it like this. In a tree, what is the main, central part? The trunk. As you go farther up the tree, the tree starts to spread out into separate branches, and those have branches, and those have branches. On and on the branches split off, but they are all connected to the same main tree trunk.
2000 years ago, Jesus started that tree. Then he had his Apostles. His disciples went out and preached to other people and they became believers and a part of that tree. Paul preached to Timothy and Apollos, for example, and they went out and taught the gospel to others. For over 2000 years now those branches have grown as more and more people become a part of the tree of Christ. Look at all the fruit that Paul has. Look at the fruit Peter has. This all happened because they continued in the vine which is Christ.
We are a part of that tree, or vine. We are “Christ-ians,” we are of Christ. Let’s bear some fruit for Him!
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 