You Can Do Nothing | The Gospels | John 15:1-17
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Why does Keith start the episode with a flower‑buying story and what does it illustrate?
Welcome to 10-Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Sometimes when I go to the grocery store, I buy flowers for my wife. They put the little floral section right at the entrance of the store. And I think they do that for guys like me so that as soon as I enter and right before I leave, I see flowers and I can ask myself, is there anyone I should buy these for? I try to find some that I think my wife will like that don't cost too much money. I bring them home, but really she has usually had to do the hard work of like cutting them and finding the right vase and getting them situated so they look good. I've been trying to get better at that.
Like I've been trying to find the vase and put the food packet in and all that stuff. It's not that hard, but I have the ability to screw up even things that shouldn't be difficult. Well, that little food packet you put in, that keeps the flowers looking better for a longer period of time. But even that doesn't last. Christine keeps the flowers that I get her probably for a little too long and they start to wilt and droop and don't look that great. And then we throw them out. Flowers, like a lot of things in our world, have a shelf life. When I bought those flowers, they were already dying. They were surviving on borrowed time. Those flowers were dying the moment they were cut because the instant the stem was severed from the plant, it lost the one connection that could actually keep it alive.
So those few days of beauty on your kitchen table, well, they're not really the flower being alive. There's a slow reveal of a death that's already happened. The flower just hasn't found out about it yet. In John 15, Jesus uses similar imagery to show us something about our lives that feels unsettling. He says that a branch can look attached even though it's already been cut off from the vine. Here's John 15 verses 4 and 5. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit for apart from me, you can do nothing.
The line that gets me every single time I read it is apart from me, you can do nothing. It's encouraging and freeing at the same time. Now, Jesus shared this truth with his disciples the night before he was crucified. He was in the upper room sharing communion with his friends. And these are some of the last private words that he ever said to them. He's just hours away from being arrested. So get this, he's not standing at a whiteboard. He's not kind of handing out a new productivity strategy. He's not giving them tips for a more effective life. He's telling the people he loves how they're going to be able to survive once he is no longer physically present with them. And what he gives them is the last of the great I am statements in John's gospel.
We've seen Jesus say, I am the bread of life, or I am the light of the world. I am the good shepherd. And now he says, I am the true vine. Why does Jesus call himself the true vine? Well, the vine was not a new image to the people who are familiar with the Old Testament. I mean, all throughout the Old Testament, Israel was called God's vine. God planted it, God tended it, and God built a wall around it to protect it. God planted a vineyard in Israel and looked for good fruit. And the heartbreak of the Old Testament is that the vine kept failing. It produced wild grapes, sour fruit, or sometimes no fruit at all. So when Jesus says, I am the true vine, he is saying that he is the vine that finally does what the vine was always meant to do.
He succeeds where Israel fails. He's the one who bears the fruit God has been looking for since the beginning. See, you got to make sure you get the order right. And Jesus says, abide in me and you will bear much fruit. Before this is ever about us bearing fruit, it is about him being the source and the power.
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