The Abiding Lesson Seven

Well, friends, you've been very patient through these studies and we will finish our study of lesson seven, the finish of the message of the abiding today. And this message I bring before you this morning is the forgotten principle of the abiding. I was driving down the road and a pickup truck in front of me had a bumper sticker that upset me.

It read, God cheated you. And the more I looked at that bumper sticker, the madder I got. I thought, who in their right mind would have such a horrible message to proclaim to society that God cheated you? Well, I sped up to get alongside that pickup truck to get a look at the monster behind the wheel who would promote such blasphemy.

As I drew closer to his vehicle, I realized that the bumper sticker did not say God cheated you, but rather it read God created you. Sometimes we think a thing is one thing when it is quite another. I used to think that being fruitful for God meant I had to stay busy for God, doing this and that and producing all I could for him.

At the time, I was writing books, and the more books I churned out, the more productive I thought I was to God. I literally had my publisher coming out with one book always on the heels of another. But the closer I drew to God through the abiding, I discovered it is not my producing fruit through my activity and efforts, but it is his activity born through me.

As a branch, all I can do is be a fruit bearer. The branch does not produce the fruit. The vine is the life source that produces the fruit.

The branch merely bears the fruit. We are fruit bearers, not fruit producers. Once we grasp this concept, friends, of fruitfulness for God, our entire outlook on Christian service and the Christian life will change.

Once I realized this principle, I quit writing books just to write books, and only wrote when I felt God was calling me to a specific project. A perfect example of this was my writing the two-volume, definitive biography of George Whitefield. God called me to this enormous work, and he opened every door to allow me to do the necessary research as I traveled all over England and Scotland, retracing Whitefield's labors, and then all up and down through America, through New England, South Carolina, and Georgia.

While I was in England, in Gloucester, the city of his birth, and the church of St. Mary the Crypt had to be on my list to visit that day, but it was closed. It was all locked up. This is the church where Whitefield was baptized, and where he preached his first sermon, that it was said, the effect of it drove fifteen people mad.

Well, a lady appeared out of nowhere to unlock the door, to let me into the church, and gave me complete access to it all day, to conduct my research. Things like that happened all the time as I researched and wrote those twelve hundred pages of Whitefield's life. It was as if a hidden hand was behind the scenes, opening the locked doors I needed access to, both equipping me and enabling me to do the work by his Spirit through the abiding.

He was producing the fruit through me, the branch. As a pastor, once you grasp this concept of the abiding, then your sermons will cut a deeper channel that will impact your people for eternity in a lasting way. There are some preachers who know this, and when I listen to them, I always remember every word they preached.

It's worth hanging on to and listening to over and over again because the vital truths have spiritual depth. This forgotten principle of the abiding regarding fruit bearing can literally transform a church. This is where the church today has lost her way, because we have convinced ourselves that we can do more by money and manpower.

This explains why activity produced by the church has no power. The church in former days realized this principle, which we have forgotten. The church in former times operated not on money and manpower, but by prayer and Holy Ghost power.

Pastors knew that the engine of the church was the weekly prayer meeting. When we killed off the weekly prayer meeting in this country and replaced it with cell groups, we shut down the main engine of the church. There is a story about Charles Spurgeon.

One day he received a visitor at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, about time before the Sunday services, and Spurgeon said he had time to show the young man the engine of the church, if he'd like to see it. The young visitor was excited as Spurgeon walked him downstairs. He thought he was going to take him to the boiler room, but instead Spurgeon opened a large door to a large room directly beneath the pulpit, and there on their knees were Spurgeon's 300 deacons immersed in prayer.

Spurgeon pointed to them and replied, See here, good sir, the engine of my church. When we accept the concept that as branches we are bearers of fruit, then the degree of fruit will change. Allow me to explain, friends.

There are several degrees of fruitfulness unto God. Let us look at these now. In verse 2 we read, And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

So we see that as we bear fruit for God, then the husbandman comes and prunes the fruitful branch back, so that more fruit may appear in the life of usefulness and fruitfulness. Then we read in verse 5 the next degree of fruit bearing. 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. So we see the progression of fruit activity in the abiding. First fruit appears.

Then comes the divine pruning knife that prunes back the fruitful bough so it can bear more fruit. As we continue to abide in Jesus through the abiding life of unbroken fellowship with him, as we live a life of consistency and consecration to him, then we can go up to the next level, the next degree of fruitfulness, and that is much fruit. This is where our life of usefulness for God comes into a broader and deeper path as a means of blessings to others.

God is using us for his great glory. Then there is a degree of fruit bearing that always amazes me when I look at the lives of men and women whom God has seemed pleased to use in former times. Their fragrant, fruitful bough continues to remain.

Verse 16 declares this principle, Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go when bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. Long after we are gone from this earthly spear, our lives will continue to impact others spiritually. How true this is when I read C.T. Studd, D.L. Moody, George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, Brainerd, and the list goes on.

Well, you may say, but preacher, I'm no Jonathan Edwards. Listen, friend, you don't have to be Jonathan Edwards. You just have to be you, you connected to the vine, with Christ shining through you.

Stay in a vital love relationship with Jesus and leave the fruit production to him. This verse speaks of the sovereignty of God in election. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.

It also speaks of the foreordained work that God has set before us and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. I wonder about the wonderful providence of God. When I was a little boy in Oak Park, Illinois, in the 1950s, God knew then he would save me.

He would train me. He would have me write the authorized biography of J. Sidlow Baxter and all my other books as well. He had already ordained these things to be.

He knew the deep waters I would have to pass through in my domestic life through the death of my wife. He saw these things before they came to pass. He knew that he would introduce me to Stephen Olford and that Stephen Olford would become my homiletical mentor, colleague, and friend, that we would write a book together on his homiletical mentor, Dr. Graham Scroggie.

God had it all worked out as he looked over the divine blueprint for my life. I believe that when we die and stand before him at the Bema seat for review, he will unfold the blueprint of our life and say, just according to plan, Does not a sovereign God tell us these things, friends, or all under his care? Look at Ephesians 2.10, which declares this truth. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

O friends, if we could only grasp this reality and embrace all that God has for us, what a thrill the Christian life would be, the degrees of fruitfulness in the Christian life. Fruit, more fruit, much fruit, fruit that remains, it is not by power, nor by might, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. Fruit is not so much what we do in the flesh for God, but what God produces through us by our vital union with the living Lord, the genuine vine.

To abide in him is to be fruitful for him. We must be clear channels for him to flow through. Well, I hope these messages on the abiding have been fruitful to you, friend, as they have been for me.

And for us to walk with God in those ordained footprints, we must stay close to God through the abiding. We must stay, remain, and dwell in an ever-present abiding in Jesus, who is our source of life, our power over sin. He, by his spirit within us, will vivify us with enough grace to bring him pleasure on his throne.

By the abiding, we will continue to be fruit-bearers for the good of others and to the glory of the Father. Stephen Offord one day shared a secret with holy living with me. Dr. Offord told me, we must walk with our risen Lord in close fellowship beneath a cloudless sky.

If and when sin temptations arise and a cloud appears to block that intimacy, then I immediately pray, nail it, Lord. Take it to your cross and nail it. And then the sun appears once again and we continue to enjoy a walk of fellowship together.

Listen, friends. Jesus, as our true vine, has everything we need to live for him. Our job is to stay in contact with him through an ever-present abiding.

His fruit will flow through us as a means of blessings to others. If we stumble and fall into a ditch of sin, then in repentance look up to the one who can pull us out of that miry clay and set our feet on solid ground again and ask him for the grace to be strengthened against that troublesome area in our life. And let us say with the Apostle Paul from Hebrews, wherefore, seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider him that endured such contradiction as sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Always remember, friends, that the abiding life is the abundant life. For Jesus declared, I am come, that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Jesus, be Jesus in me, is the prayer of my heart for each of us as we come to heaven's shore. Let us take these things and take them and make them a reality in every aspect of our lives as we live unto God for his glory. Let us pray.