Hey, this is day 31 on our 40-day tour through the Gospel of John.

Thanks as always for tuning in. I'm truly honored to be your tour guide and to point you

to the life-changing Word of God, like in today's

text. John chapter 15, verses 1 to 8, where Jesus famously says, I am the vine and you are the branches.

That's in verse 5. He also says, I'm the vine again in the first verse, John 15, 1.

So abide in me, Jesus says. Stay connected to me. If your life is a branch,

make sure you're connected to me, Jesus is saying, divine. Did you know that the literal definition

of Christian is somebody who belongs to Christ? It's from the ancient word Christianos.

Ianos means that Christ owns us. And he's not selling, he's not going to let go.

No matter what happens, he's holding on to us.

The only way we're going to get disconnected from Christ is if we let go, or we get distracted,

or we start connecting to other things more importantly than to Jesus himself.

The image of a vineyard is common in the Old Testament. It's

described in Psalm 80, Isaiah 5, other places. The vineyard describes God's people. So now

Jesus is bringing that into sharper focus, saying the way God blesses his people, the way

he produces fruit is through me, the vine. It's the only way. Verse two, Jesus goes on and

warns, says, this gardener, who's my father in heaven, God cuts off every branch of mine that doesn't produce

fruit. And he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they'll produce even more. Some of you are

master gardeners. You understand this on the deepest levels. Others of you

are farmers. You do too, or you grew up on farms. I didn't, but I worked for two summers on a grounds

crew at a big hospital, and I worked for a master gardener named Yop Janssen. And Yop would teach the crew

and I not just what to do but why we were doing it and I

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