If somehow a part of your body became detached like say one of your fingers or your arm, what would happen to it, if you didn’t get medical help to reattach it? It would shrivel up and die. Why? Because your finger or your arm has been separated from the rest of your body that contains your blood and the other necessary things to keep it alive.
What happens when a thunderstorm goes through an area and large branches are broken off of the trees in a neighborhood? What happens to those branches? They dry out, and die, because they are no longer receiving the water and nutrients that they need to live and grow.
Once something such as a broken branch dies, it is obviously no longer fit to produce leaves or fruit anymore, and the only thing left to do with it is to burn them or throw it into the woods to let it rot away. It’s not useful to the tree anymore.
The Bible teaches us that Jesus is like a vine, or like the tree that I used as an example, and that we are the branches that come off of that vine/tree. As long as we abide in the vine which is Jesus and produce fruit (which is a faithful life of obedience to God’s Word) we will continue to remain in that vine. But if one does not “produce fruit” by living a life that is obedient and faithful to the teachings of the Lord, but instead live in sin and wickedness, these people will be cut off and cast away as a dead branch, and cast into the fires of hell.
John 15:1-6 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.
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
Jesus calls His believers to abide in His teachings, “bearing fruit” as we live our lives. The Lord taught that by one’s fruit you shall know them (Matthew 7:20) and a person’s fruit can be seen by their actions. You will visibly see who someone is by what they do with their lives. If they do evil and sin without repenting then you can know that they are definitely not of God and that they are not a Christian, but if they are actively filled with good works and are submitting themselves to the Word of the Lord they are the branches that bring forth much fruit.
This is a common theme that I use when I write, but it is so true that no one is in control of whether or not they live to reach a ripe old age. This may be desired and sought after, but it is God who is truly in control of when He is going to take someone. Some people only reach into their twenties while some may live to be over one hundred years old, but whatever length of time that someone lives, that is their window of opportunity to bear fruit in the Lord. Once that window closes it is too late, and if that branch has not produced fruit it will be cast away, that person will be cast away into hell.
So use your time wisely, for you don’t know which day could be your last. Use your time that you have and begin bearing fruit, and continue to live in the teachings of Christ.
Ephesians 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
You only have one life. Make the most of it and serve the Lord.
In Christ
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 