Lord’s Day Meditation: “The Branch Cannot Bear Fruit of Itself” by C.H. Spurgeon

Lord’s Day Meditation: “The Branch Cannot Bear Fruit of Itself” by C.H. Spurgeon (Morning & Evening, November 13, Morning)

“The branch cannot bear fruit of itself.” (John 15:4)

How did you begin to bear fruit? It was when you came to
Jesus and cast yourselves on his great atonement, and rested on his finished
righteousness. Ah! what fruit you had then! Do you remember those early days?
Then indeed the vine flourished, the tender grape appeared, the pomegranates
budded forth, and the beds of spices gave forth their smell. Have you declined
since then? If you have, we charge you to remember that time of love, and
repent, and do thy first works. Be most in those engagements which you have
experimentally proved to draw you nearest to Christ, because it is from him
that all your fruits proceed. Any holy exercise which will bring you to him
will help you to bear fruit. The sun is, no doubt, a great worker in
fruit-creating among the trees of the orchard: and Jesus is still more so among
the trees of his garden of grace. When have you been the most fruitless? Has
not it been when you have lived farthest from the Lord Jesus Christ, when you
have slackened in prayer, when you have departed from the simplicity of your
faith, when your graces have engrossed your attention instead of your Lord,
when you have said, “My mountain standeth firm, I shall never be
moved”; and have forgotten where your strength dwells–has not it been
then that your fruit has ceased? Some of us have been taught that we have
nothing out of Christ, by terrible abasements of heart before the Lord; and
when we have seen the utter barrenness and death of all creature power, we have
cried in anguish, “From him all my fruit must be found, for no fruit can
ever come from me.” We are taught, by past experience, that the more
simply we depend upon the grace of God in Christ, and wait upon the Holy
Spirit, the more we shall bring forth fruit unto God. Oh! to trust Jesus for
fruit as well as for life.

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