This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you have drawn near to us. We thank you that you have come. You have lived the life we should have lived. You have died the death we should have died. And you have risen again.

And, Lord, we thank you that you have sent your holy spirit that mystery that was hidden for ages of Christ in us, the hope of glory. And, Lord, we thank you that by your spirit you are with us now. And, Lord, that you would speak your words to us this evening. Amen. Amen.

We've come to the end of a summer series. I hid in your word, in my heart, each time. We've been taking sort of little nuggets of scripture that we're saying these. If you're gonna. It's very hard to learn the whole thing.

There's a lot of words in the Bible, but if you're gonna learn the scripture, which we really recommend you do, these are the ones that we would love you to learn. And he's introduced us to this one, John 15 five. This is Jesus speaking. This is during a speech he's giving to his followers just before he goes to die for them on the cross. And he says, I am divine.

You are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

One of the realities about ministering in a place like Winterfield is that every summer or every autumn around this time, we prepare ourselves to say goodbye to people that have become a part of us. And it's quite sad that we're excited to send out young people, often students, but also folks just leaving us for other clients, and to say, go. The question for us as ministers is this. This is our heart's cry. For those who go on, will they be remembers?

Not part of the 48, sir. Will they remain? Will they stick with Jesus? And you may have heard that in Hannah's reading, it's up here. Once if you remain weak, Jesus uses the word remain ten times.

His instructions called disciples. Remain. Remain. Remain. Remain.

Remaindehen. Remain. Will you remain? I've had a great summer, but a busy summer. One of the encouragements I had is meeting up with some young people from years back from my previous church.

And one such opportunity was a camp that I was invited to speak on. It was for lads aged ten to 14 in Denver. And it was run by one of our ex young people who's now heading up this camp with her husband. She's early thirties now, and they've stuck with Jesus. They've got kids, they've got family.

They're stuck into church and their ministry is bearing fruit. It's amazing, this camp that's called Derek Christian youth camps, and it's been going for decades and in grand brethren movement. And almost every night when I was speaking, we had a few local old boys, visitors who had been at the camp sort of 670 years ago, because they wanted to see this camp continue to bear fruit. And it was just so encouraging just to see this image of generations of people going, I was there, and it was just so great to see that ban passed on. Young people being told about Jesus and seeing in them the young people who the gospel, to whom the gospel was preached decades ago, who have been made in Jesus.

It's been great to hear from some of our students who've gone on saying, you know, I'm on the committee for the Christian Union and my university, or I've been asked to lead a Bible study at my church. That is just everything that we love to hear as ministers. And the stories aren't always as good. I remember a number of years ago meeting up for lunch with one of our ex young people. Again, a solid career, was doing well in many ways, was obvious.

There was no sign of christian faith in terms of the way he was living his life. A long time girlfriend seemed interesting, living in a frat house, playing a lot of video games, not going to church. And I can tell that he sort of wanted to encourage me. And he said, well, I sort of still christian thoughts when I'm watching the news. I can't feel about it.

And that's something. But Christianity isn't at its heart. Worldview. Worldview is really, really important. And we hope that in these sermons we will be teaching and training you how to look out in the world through a christian lens.

But the world is full of plenty of people that say, yeah, Christianity has it right on a lot of things. You know, jaw pizza, Donald Trump occasionally amputate at times. But Christianity at its heart is not worthy. Christianity at its heart is a relationship and a life, and a life lived with Jesus. Christianity is Jesus because Jesus is God.

Cs Lewis once wrote this about the nature of Christianity, gave you a different metaphor. He said, God made us. He invented us as a man in bed. A car is made to run on petrol and it will not run properly on anything else. Now, God designed a human machine to run on himself.

He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it's just no good. Asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from because it is not there.

And I don't know what verse cs Lewis had in his mind when he was writing that, but I may well expect it was John, chapter 15. Let's read it again. I am divine. You are the branches remaining me, and I am. You will bear much fruit apart from me.

You can do nothing. It's a simple metaphor, but I'd like us to ask two questions of it tonight. And firstly, when Jesus is saying to us, follow us, you know, what does it mean for Jesus to be in us and for us to be in him? What do those phrases mean? And secondly, what is this fruit?

What is it that we can't do without Jesus? And he says, apart from me, you can do nothing. Well, there's a. There's not a lot of people out there in the world who don't believe in Jesus doing very worthy things. So what is it that we can't do without him?

So firstly, let's just unpack this. He and us and us and him. Whether pictures of the Bible, we've kind of got to work out sort of how far to take. What did Jesus really mean and what didn't you mean? I don't know.

When I. When I saw that picture and I kind of think of people and vines and branches, my mind goes to avatar. I don't know if you saw that movie, but it's sort of set in this kind of alternate universe where the kind of people in there can kind of literally sort of intertwine with the world around them. They have kind of digits and limbs that are sort of literally quite branch like and twig like. And at the end of the moon, they're sort of all gather around being a part of each other, sort of around this great tree.

And it sort of has this kind of picture of unity as sort of, well, this kind of picture of heaven is kind of losing all your distinctiveness and kind of being found in this oneness. And that's sort of taken much more from kind of buddhist eastern mythology than it is Christianity. When Jesus talks about this power, it's not this power that kind of bypasses our consciousness. When Jesus is talking about salvation, when we're talking about this future home we find in the Bible, Jesus is always talking about relational reality. It's always about relationship.

And why is that? The reason is because we find at the start of scripture the diagnosis of all our problems is relation. What happened there was a relationship with God that was fractured. That relationship with God fractured others and our relationship with the world. And so to come back, what is Jesus trying to do?

What is Jesus trying to redeem? He's trying to redeem relationship, which is why later in John 15, when he's unpacking his image of vine branches, he talks in terms of relationship. Relationship is about speaking and hearing. If we're both speaking and we're both hearing each other, we're in relationship. So he says things like this to disciples.

He says, you are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. If you remain here and my words remain in you, keep my commands as I have kept my father's commands. What does Jesus mean when he says, I want you to remain in you? He's told us in chapter 14, he says, the Holy Spirit is going to come on you and the Holy Spirit. Job is to remind you of my words.

Is to remind you of my words. And so Jesus says to us tonight, remain. I want to remain in you. My remaining in you means this reminder from the Holy Spirit about how we have remained, about how we have been alive and the life to which we have been called, as well as, of course, the future. Hope the Holy Spirit is not a power that needs to be revoked down if we ask hard enough.

It's not an impersonal force that bypasses our humanity. The Holy Spirit is the one who dwells within the Christians, speaking to our whole self about the nature of relationship with him, both past, present and future. He is in us, and of course, us in him.

I've lost.

What does it mean to be found in Jesus? We've talked about Jesus being found in us. What does it mean for us to be found in Jesus if he is somehow in our body? Where is the body of Christ that we might live in? What is the body of Christ in scripture, the body of Christ is church.

And we see in verse twelve how he calls us to be church, not to build institutions, although that's important. Not to create theological education programmes, although that's important. What does Jesus says? He says, my command is this. Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love is no one. This so lay one's life down for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. How we come to love each other. We call to love each other like Jesus.

We call to lay down our lives for one another. And we did a series on this a while back. For one another. We talk about teaching one another, serving one another, encouraging one another, speaking well of one another, forgiving one another, being present with one another, sharing in food and bread and wine. And folks, we forget, if you've been in church for a while, you forget that church is a miracle.

Church in itself is a miracle. This gathering is a miracle. And we can be reminded of that when we see things like the Sunday assembly. The Sunday assembly is an attempt by atheists to recreate church, which in itself is a compliment, right? There are folks out there going, there is something here about community.

We love the togetherness, we love the relationship, we love how we feel bonded together. We just want to get rid of God, we just want to get rid of Jesus and we're going to try and do it. And inevitably they managed to hear that once a month for a bit of comedy and a few possums. But this is not relation, this is not church. Church is a miracle because it is a group of people, the spirit dwelling in and found in Christ and in one another.

And I don't know whether you noticed that, I haven't realised this until recently. I went to a conference where there's a sort of people that like to look at where culture is going and look at statistics and talk about church. And one of the speakers was reciting all these statistics, statistics about the health benefits of church. She was saying, if doctors, if the National Health Service wanted to create a healthy population, they should prescribe church. And one of the statistics she gave us was that going to church is as good for your health as giving up smoking.

Going to church is as good as giving up smoking, which the application is. If you're a smoker and not come to church and carry on to church is a miracle and church is good for us in so many ways and we can't forget this. And particularly when folks leave us, it shows us a while ago, and I chat with a student who sort of done their first year and they came back saying, oh, it's been. It's been rocky. I've had all these questions and all these doubts and they talked about some of the questions and some of the doubts and I just let this person talk and talk until they sort of came to the realisation.

They said, well, hang on a minute. When I was back at home, I was meeting regularly with this group of Christians who were my friends, and I lost that and I think I've just fallen off the land. It is so important to remain in church, remain in Christ in terms of what it means for Christ to remain in us, for us to remain in him so the second question around this verse, what does it mean when Jesus says, you'll go and bear fruit? I've appointed you to go and bear fruit? We see in verse 16, he says, I've appointed you so that you might go and bear fruits.

Now, those of you who know your scripture, you may go. Well, I know that somewhere else, the Bible talks about the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. It talks about character traits. Is that what Jesus is talking about here? We can include that.

But the fact that Jesus is saying, go, he's saying to his followers, go and bear fruit means that it cannot own that you can grow your character without going. But Jesus said, no, I want you to go and witness beyond the walls of the church, to extend God's kingdom through the life of the church in number and in testimonies. Now, in other places, this is a commandment. You know, it's a great commission at the end of go and make disciples. But the emphasis as we read down John 15, it's almost like Jesus is saying, if you first do these things, if you first remain me and I remain, this ought to be something that happens naturally.

And this is what the vine and the branches at its heart is about. When it talks about sort of branches getting cut off and burnt because they weren't useful, that's not a you better do your actions boat or your eggs. What Jesus is saying is, when a branch is in the vine, it produces fruit. When a branch is loving, there's no way it can produce fruit. And if you remain here and I and you, then this.

This will happen. The mission will take place. If you're connected to a church, this is the place in which mission was a missionary called Leslie. He coined his phrase that the church was the hermeneutic of the gospel. You say, well, I heard that's a hermeneutic.

It sounds painful. It's not. A hermeneutic is a lens through which people will hear the good news of Jesus. It's a lens through which people will hear and understand the good news of Jesus. And what he's saying is, if we go out and share the gospel about Jesus Christ, who's died for sins and offers new life in him, there are going to be assumptions that people have about church and about christians through which they're going to hear that message, through which they receive that message.

A few years ago, I was a predator Christian of elders and philosophy students. And before we started, I said, I like to talk to a person next to you about when you hear the word Christian, what do you think? What emotions come to mind? And one girl felt back and says, well, my grandmother's a Christian and she really wasn't a very nice person. And I know that that is not true of all Christians.

And yet I can't help but let it colour my view of Christians and Christianity. And thankfully, that's my, that's my usual picture. One of the other encouragements I took away from this, this conference was from Glenn Strogan, some of you, and he said that the research shows that if you ask a non Christian what their impressions of Christians, the vast majority of them have positive impressions of the people they know who are Christians. And that should embolden us in our witness session, embolden us in our arrangement. The people that are gaining us are sort of institutions that kind of public face and that's probably what we hear the most as church.

We think the world must hate us, but the reality is most people have a positive image of Christians and Christianity and we should be empowered by that. Jesus says, without me you can do nothing. We can't persuade non believers to believe in Christ without doing mission. We can't do mission without the church. We can't do church without the Holy Spirit.

And we wouldn't have the Holy Spirit unless Jesus had sent them.

A few years ago, a theologian called Michael Bohemian. He wrote a book on the Leslie Newbigoon and mission and he summarised six things that Newbigen said about what the church ought to be if it wants to be effective in mission. They're pretty good. I just want to read them out to you now. He says this, that the church will be a community of praise in a world of doubt and scepticism.

Secondly, the church will be a community of truth in a plural of society that overwhelms the produces relativism. Thirdly, the church will be a selfless community that does not live for itself, but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighbourhood in the selfish world. Fourthly, the church will be a community prepared to live up the gospel in public life in a world that privatises full religious kinds. Fifth, the church will be a community of mutual responsibility and world of individual and sickly. The church will be a community of hope in a world of pessimism and despair about the future.

At the youth camp I spoke out a couple of weeks ago, we were going through the book of John and I was trying to work out which bits from John to choose from and the back half I said to the young people, I said I wanted to choose those things that are most important for your faith to carry on when you get back home. And the three chapters I chose in backgrounds were John chapter ten, where Jesus talks about being the good shepherd. Because the number one reason I believe christians don't remain christians is because they stop listening to Jesus or they rejected. The second one was John chapter eleven. I am the resurrection and life.

I said I chose that one. The second biggest reason is because christians are not prepared for life to be hard while to be hit with tragedy and suffering, and we need to know what's coming and live in suffering for the glory of God. And thirdly, the last one I chose was John chapter 17, which is Jesus prayer for the church. And the third reason people don't remain is because for one reason another they stop doing church. So Christians friends, tonight, will you be a remainder?

Will you keep listening to the voice of the shepherd? Will you face difficulty and struggle to the glory of God, trusting in him? And are we found among the people of Goddesse week in, week out, remain union and honey, in you. Jesus says to us this evening, let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your worldwide church. Lord, we thank you that your mission goes forth in so many countries around the world. Lord, we thank you that we are in a country where we can find the members who are preaching your word, who are praying to you and Lord Jesus, we want to pray particularly for those that will go out from us over the next month. I thank you for and I thank you for those who may be rooted in you, that they may not only be able to see the world through your eyes, but Lord, live a life in the power of your spirit. Us, we thank you that you give us hope and we pray that your spirit will be teaching us what it is to rely on your love and the future hope that we have in your death and resurrection.