Living and Flourishing in Christ
Abide-7 TITLE: Living and Flourishing in Christ TEXT: John 15:1-17 TONE: Encouragement TARGET: Believers TASK: To encourage believers to abide in Christ for life, nourishment, and strength. TRUTH: A skillet with burnt eggs will be hard to clean in the morning. An alternative to scrubbing is soaking the dish in hot water and dishwashing liquid. Letting a dish abide in the solution will allow a hard cleaning job to become a lost easier. This is what abiding does for a Christian. TEACH: In the time of Jesus a great golden vine hung over the entrance to the Jerusalem temple. Josephus describes it: ‘The gate opening into the building was, as I said, completely overlaid with gold, as was the whole wall around it. It had, moreover, above it those golden vines, from which depended grape-clusters as tall as a man’ ( Jewish War v.210–212). If the second part of Jesus’ farewell discourse was given en route from the Last Supper venue to the Garden