Kerwin Baptist Church Daily Broadcast

Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our desire is for the Word of God to be He is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

What are we talking about here? You see in our preacher now in verse two, he said that he was talking about in me and yet then he talks about the fact that this branch is not producing fruit and literally that he's discarded and kind of a thing and no we talk about that word. It means lifted up literally in a sense that this is a saved individual that's not bearing fruit. And look at verse six, if a man abide not in me. But wait a minute, in verse one and two he's talking about a saved individual that wasn't abiding.

And so he had to go, remember he went through the whole process that he has to reach down, clean that branch of sin, lift it up, replace it where it can get sun, where it can get nutrients and all these things. I believe and I'm not going to argue with you you'll find some commentators, you'll get a commentator about half and half, 50-50 some will say this verse is talking about unsaved people and then the other will tell you hey this is talking about saved people and different things and I just take it in context of the scripture because all through this passage in the first eight verses he's talking about somebody that is already in Christ. So I believe that verse six is not talking about somebody that's unsaved because a lot of people take this verse to believe that you can be saved but then lose your salvation.

And I do not believe that. And Kerwin Baptist Church, our Constitution, our doctrinal statement, everything, we believe that once you are truly saved you're always saved. So how do we understand verse six? It says to cast them into the fire. Many will say that oh this is a person that literally, and many, now we know that we don't believe this but many religions will say well here's the person that was connected but they didn't continue to grow and they let sin come back into their life and so they were cast forth, they gathered, they died, they were cast into the fire, that means hell, they're going to hell now because of the choices they've made in their life and different things and that is just not the case.

So let me explain it if I can. You know the Bible says for you and me to be holy as God is holy. Now that's not popular nowadays but the Bible still says that that's what we are supposed to be. With that if we are holy as God is holy and through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit in our lives you and I can bear fruit for the glory of God.

Everybody with me so far? Now we are to abide in Christ and he in us in order to be fruitful branches that produce the peaceable work of righteousness, the fruits of the Spirit. Bearing fruit isn't just winning people to Christ and leading them to the Lord although that is part of it obviously. We bear from abiding in Christ is literally the fruits of the Spirit. It means that we are so full of the Spirit that the Spirit begins to grow the fruits of the Spirit and we bear those fruits out of our life but if we do not abide in Christ and he has not given first place in our lives then you and I will not produce good fruit.

Are you with me so far? That means this, if we do not abide in him we do not abide in Christ and we will live an unfruitful Christian life. Listen to me, saved but unproductive. Saved but unfruitful. Saved but only producing the unfruitful works of darkness. Saved but living as an unproductive, unfruitful Christian who is not giving glory to God. The Bible says that such and one is thrown away as a branch and withers away.

This kind of person dries up, is cast into the fire and burns. You say preacher, I just don't understand all this. Look at me, we're talking about his works.

We're talking about the things he does. Not his eternal soul. We're talking about his works and I'm going to show you and prove to you from the Bible that that is what we're talking about here. It is literally speaking of a Christian that wastes his life. Saved but wasted. Saved but losing and missing an opportunity. You see sadly this illustration of a vine and its fruitful or unfruitful branches is often used to suggest that you can be saved but then go so far away from God that you lose your salvation.

May I say this, a believer's faithfulness and fruitfulness depends on close fellowship with Christ. This fire we're talking about, look at me, does not burn you. It burns your works. It burns the things that you have so-called done in the name of Christ.

They're unfruitful, unproductive. Which leads us next, secondly, to the family. All part of one thought, you got to stick with me.

The family. Now, if you'll hold your place, now these verses will be up here but if you have your Bible, you need to look at it eyeball on the page, okay? 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul deals with this. Now, and I want you to understand what we're talking about here. Remember what he said. That a man that abideth not in me, he dries up, he withers, he's cast away as a branch and burned.

That's what he's talking about here. So look at 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 11. So we have fire, and now we want to talk about the subject of family and why these two coexist. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 11. on this foundation blank. So these are the things that you can put on top of the foundation. You can put gold, silver, precious stones, or you can put on top of the foundation of salvation, wood, hay, and stubble. That means this, once you've been saved on that foundation, you can now build with gold, silver, precious stone, or wood, hay, and stubble. And what's the difference between gold, silver, precious stone, and wood, hay, and stubble? It's the fact that they're not burnt up.

Wood, hay, and stubble burns. Everybody got that? Now, look at verse 13. Every man's work, not soul, every man's work shall be made manifest. In other words, we're gonna find out what you built on that foundation since you've been saved. We're gonna find out if you've been building with gold, silver, precious stone, or if we've been building with wood, hay, and stubble. Every man's work shall be made manifest, not his soul, his work, because this is built on top of the foundation of the fact that we've become a believer in Jesus Christ.

Now, look if you would. Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by what? Fire.

That's how we know. It goes in the fire. And if it was wood, hay, and stubble, it's gonna be disintegrated.

If it was gold, silver, and precious stone, it's gonna remain. And what did our passage say? That Jesus wants us to have fruit that remains.

So now let's continue reading. Reveal by fire and the fire shall try every man's work, not soul, work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built there upon, he shall receive a reward. What do you mean if any man's work abide? After it's tried with fire, if it still abides, he gets a reward.

But notice this. If any man's work shall be burned, that means it was tried with fire, and because it was wood, hay, and stubble, it just burnt up, disintegrated, he shall suffer loss. But he himself shall be what? Saved. Yet so as by fire. What are we talking about here?

Look at me. That means we're still family. We're still saved, but fruitless. That means when the refiner's fire hit our life, if we have been doing things without abiding in the vine, if it's been through our power, if it's been through our effort, if it's been through our education, and by the way, we are very good at trying to do all those things. Once we figure out how to do it through God's power, we think we can do it in our own power.

But God's fire will reveal that one day. And if it's been done because of abiding in the vine, it remains. We receive a reward. But if it's wood, hay, and stubble, it says you'll suffer loss. Loss of what? Loss of crowns, loss of reward. I mean, you don't think regret will be in there? One of my favorite songs my mom used to sing, I wish I had given him more. I wish I had given him more. Now listen to me, let me give you some statements here.

Number one is this. Born into the family of God is our position. If you've been saved by the grace of God, your position now is that you are in the family of God. Can I have an amen right there? You're in the family.

Thank God for that. Everybody with me so far? That's your position. Statement number two, being a fruitful branch connected to the vine is our purpose. That's our purpose. So my position is I'm in the family. But the purpose of my life now that I'm in the family is to be connected to the true vine and to stay, to abide in him.

That's the purpose of my life. In other words, now that I'm in the family, there's nothing I could do that would have any eternal value unless I do it being connected to the vine. Is a light bulb going off so far?

Some of you are like, no, it's flickering. Okay, well just hold on. Statement number three.

Now this is where you'll start making sense. Keeping us in the family is God's job. Keeping us in the family is God's job. Hey, I couldn't get myself in and I can't get myself out and I can't keep myself in.

If I couldn't get myself in, how can I keep myself in? So staying in the family is God's job. So staying in the family is God's job, amen?

Statement number four. Continuing to abide in the vine is our job. Do you understand the difference why we're not talking about salvation here in verse six? Our position is we're saved, we're in the family of God, but our purpose is to abide in the vine so that the Holy Spirit can grow fruit in our life. And we will find out one day if that fruit that we think that we've been coming out of our life, if it was either produced by the Spirit of God or it was produced by the flesh, and if it was produced by the Spirit of God, it will remain after the fire has tried it and we'll have reward eternally for what we have allowed God to do through our lives. But if it was done through our old nasty flesh, it's wood, hay, and stubble, and it'll be burned up as a branch is what verse six means. You say, preacher, is this supposed to be encouraging to me?

Well, let me put it this way. Paul calls the fruitful believer a spiritual man. He calls the unfruitful believer a carnal man.

Carnal is worldly, fleshly. You see, there's a whole lot of, it looks like fruit in religion right now. That's carnal fruit.

The problem is when that's tried by fire, it might be nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble. But there is some real remaining fruit out there that might not look so impressive to you or me. But that's what will remain because it was of the Spirit of God. To abide in Christ and to be fruitful is to say, not my will but thine, Lord. To fail to abide in Christ is to say, my will, not thine.

Everybody got it. To abide in Christ is God, your will, not mine. To not abide in Christ is God, my will, not yours.

And that's the difference. Saved but void of fruit. Saved but a wasted life that dishonored the Father. Saved to the uttermost but utterly fruitless.

Jesus put it this way, listen to me. This will make sense. He who saves his life shall lose it. And he who loses his life, he says, for my sake shall find it. Fire and family. We're in the family. But the fire lets us know if we did it in the vine or if we did it in the flesh. Which brings us third to the fruit.

You're like, hey, we're almost done. Just those three things. Do you believe that? Say amen. Okay.

That's good. Verse 16. The fruit. Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go forth and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name he may give it you. This is his concluding statement to this phrase. Remember, these are the last words of Christ. This is his last bit of instruction to his disciples.

This is very, very important. Notice this, and I want you, and I have these phrases, I want you to get it. This verse is a description of the convergence of three things. Now please notice the verse. Ye have not chosen me, I have chosen you and ordained you that ye should go. This is a convergence of God's will. You have not chosen me, God says, I have chosen you. God's will, God's power, and have ordained you that ye should what? Go and bring forth fruit, our obedience. This verse is the convergence of three things. God's will, God's power, mixed with our obedience. And what does that produce?

It produces fruit that remains. This is as simple folks, as I can make the phrase. Nick, you've been around this a long time.

Is that not good? I needed somebody to affirm me. Because I didn't write it. It's not mine, I'm just sharing what God. Listen, this is as simple as you can make it. When you have God's will and God's power mixed with your obedience. It's not your will, it's not your power. You don't grow the fruit, you don't prune the branches. It's not even your vineyard. But when you mix God's will, God's power, you've not chosen me, he says, I've chosen you. What does that mean?

Listen, I want you to get this. Aren't you glad that Jesus did the choosing? You see, if we did the choosing, then we would eventually not trust our flesh. You see, if we choose Christ and we say, if we're the one that started this whole thing and we chose this, well, when things get tough, what's gonna happen? We're gonna un-choose it.

Because that's us. But he says, you've not chosen me. Now, things are getting ready to get bad, Jesus is saying, I'm gonna be crucified, I'm gonna be gone.

And you don't even fully get that yet. Listen, you didn't choose me, Jesus says, I chose you. And I've ordained you. So God chooses God's will.

He ordained God's power that ye should what? Just go. Just go. Just obey. Just obey. And if you combine God's will and God's power, and the only thing you bring to it is say, all right, God, I got nothing, but I'll go.

What does that produce? That's the whole point of him being the vine. Hey, branches don't all of a sudden butt out a vine.

Vines butt out branches. We didn't choose him, he chose us. We came from him, he didn't come from us. And his flowing power, when combined with us, simply obeying, simply staying clean, simply abiding in him, it produces fruit that remains.

I don't know that any of us understand how good and simple this is. Jesus was giving this discourse to the disciples, look at me, get this, about the vine and the branches, because he was telling them this. You're gonna need to continue to abide in me, even though you're not with me. You see, it had been easy for them to abide in Christ during this whole time, he was right there with them. But now they had to learn to abide in him, even when they couldn't abide with him. Which brings me to my next statement for you to get here this morning. We are to abide in him, even though we can't presently reside with him. But we're going to. So until then, we've got to abide in him, because right now we can't abide with him.

So he put the Holy Spirit in us, so that he can abide in us, and we can abide in him. Some mixed emotions there. It's like watching your mother-in-law go over the cliff in your new car, mixed emotions.

Not my mother-in-law, I love her. Notice what it says at the end, and I'm done. That whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it. You see, this verse is a verse of converging things.

It's drawing everything to a close. Look at me, when you combine God's will, God's power, and your obedience, you produce fruit that remains. But notice this, he says that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it. This is a convergence of some other things. Listen, when your faith, God's will, your abiding, and Jesus' purpose, when those four things combine in your life, look at me, he begins to move you to ask for things according to his will. And when you ask for those things, he does it.

See, verse 16 is a level in our Christian life that most Christians never quite get to. You say, why? Ben, were you able to get that picture? I don't know if you can see this. I know this is really kind of hard, it's small.

This is the best I could do. It hit my thought last night, and it's a miracle that I even found this. You all know from hearing me ramble about it many times that I grew up in an Airstream travel trailer with my mom and dad, which was, that's just another whole story.

That's another whole five years of counseling. But our trailer had a rear bathroom, and there's different floor plans and travel trailers, but when you would go into our travel trailer, when you would go in immediately to the right was the front couch on the front. That front couch pulled out, that was my bed. You went to the left, there's a little kitchen, and if I could take the time to show you, I found the exact trailer that I grew up in. I looked it up, the year, everything else, got online, looked at images, and I found a trailer that is, and it's weird because it was on sale, it's for sale on eBay, and I, maybe you've been telling me about it, I saw it and I said, I thought that might be our trailer. I mean, it has the exact same material on the couches, it has the same thing on the walls, it had cracks in places that it was the exact same thing.

It had, I mean, little things that dad added when he bought it new, it was exactly, I thought, my goodness, this might be, so I emailed the guy and he said, no, guy I got it from had it, so it wasn't it. But everything was the same, and in the bathroom, this is the exact, and I know it's hard for some of you to see, but there's like this flower type design, the whole bathroom was done in that. I'm sure my dad just loved that, having to get dressed with pink and yellow flowers. I remember as a kid, I still remember, remember exactly where lights were, remember the tub situation and all this stuff, but this is the toilet, and here's why it's unique, you like, you've never seen a toilet as part of a sermon illustration, because, well, there's so much I could say to that, but. But this trailer, and this is exactly like ours, this is like memory lane for me, exact same situation, but it had a cover that fit on top of the toilet, and it made a seat so that it was like a vanity so a woman could do her makeup and stuff there, and so that vinyl thing that has the same stuff as the wallpaper on the wall, that would kinda fold up and move, and then the toilet lid was there, and you could use the toilet, but when the toilet wasn't in use, you could fold it down and it made a seat. And I remember that growing up, because I was in the front, and halfway through the trailer, there was a couch on the left, and that folded out, that's where my mom and dad slept all those years, but you would have to, and it left a space about this much, and in the middle of the night, they'd have to go to the bathroom, they'd have to get up from mine, and I would have to walk sideways around their bed to get to the back bathroom. And I've told you that I don't have any recollection in my life of ever, and I know you think I'm exaggerating, and I mean maybe with the, if my mom was sick or something, I'm sure there had to be times, but I just don't remember waking up that my mom was not already up.

I don't have memories, and I'm sure they're there, that's not what I'm claiming, I'm just telling you, I don't have memories of ever getting up when my mom was in bed. My mom got up very early every morning, and she would go into this little bathroom, it had a door that closed at the very back, and that's where she would have her devotions every morning. And that's where she would pray every morning. In my entire life, whenever I would wake up, whatever time, early morning, you didn't need to use the restroom, I'd have to get up, I'd have to shuffle by the bed, mom would never be there in bed, dad would be. You could hear him. And I would shuffle, and I would have to knock on the door, and my mom would get up out of that seat, set stuff on the counter, and get out so I could go in and use the restroom, and every time I'd get up in the morning and use the restroom there, there'd be Bibles, there'd be prayer lists, there'd be books, there'd be all this stuff laid out.

Every morning of my life. And I found this picture, I mean, that is the exact bathroom. You say, okay, that's great, but what does this mean? That is abiding in Christ. Look at verse three. He said, now you are clean through the word, which I have spoken unto you. What did she do there?

Every morning of her life, look at me. That's what abiding is. Abiding is every day making sure you're clean. That's all there is to it. It's not studying how I can manipulate people, and how I could speak this, and understand all this, and teach this, and how I can just get all these tools and my arsenal of dealing with people.

No, no, no, no, no. It's just every morning getting up and caring enough to get up and sit down and make sure she was clean so the Holy Spirit could work through her. That's abiding. It isn't all this grand whatever. It was like last night, it hit me.

Boom. Abiding is just making sure you're clean through the word. Amen.

That's all abiding is. God does the rest. It's his vineyard. He prunes the branches.

He grows the fruit. Our job is just to abide. If it's this little tiny bathroom in an Airstream trailer, if it's your little home office at the, wherever it is, you need a place where you can abide every day.

It's that simple. Can I ask you something? Are you clean through the word which he spoke unto us?

I mean, listen, many of you are watching online maybe this morning in different things. Hey, I don't care what all we have faced in 2020. Can I ask something? Is your attitude and spirit right right now? Are you clean through the word? I mean, I don't care what accusations you could throw at me, at the staff, at the church, at whatever the case, trust me, we've had them this year.

But can I ask you something? Are you clean through the word? Are you abiding?

Because that's what abiding is. It's just making sure you're clean through the word so that God can grow the fruit through your life. You've not chosen me, he said. I've chosen you and ordained you. That means something.

So all I need you to do is go and bear fruit. Thank you for listening today. We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kerwin Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web at kerwinbaptistchurch.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app.

Thank you for listening to the Kerwin broadcast today. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you.