The Vine and the Branches
It is at the end of Jesus’ public period. He is on his way thru the big Temple in Jerusalem with his disciples. They pass the big gate into the Holy of the Temple. Above those great gates is a great cluster of Grapes carved into the stone wall. It is a picture of that great Cluster of grapes the explorers brought back to Moses in the desert before the People were to take possession of the land that God had promised their fathers.
This Cluster was so huge that they had to carry it on a pole between themselves! This is what is written in Numbers 13:17-25( 4Mos)
This gigantic cluster of grapes had been carved into the stone wall above the Gates to the Holy part of the Temple.
When Jesus and his disciples pass it, He point to that great picture and in John 15:1-7 it is written what he said.
If you have seen a Vine you know that it is not much to look at. In the autumn there is only the trunk (log) left. Actually it is no ordinary trunk. Because the Vine has almost nothing in common with normal trees. It has no beauty at all and it is certainly not grand and tall. The Vine looks much more like an old tuber (bulb) forced up from the soil to the height of about 70 cm.
It has no practical use at all. You can’t carve anything from it. You can’t make anything from it. All you can do with it is use it as fuel for the fire. That’s why Jesus said that the branches with no fruit get cut off and thrown on the fire. It is the only thing they can be used for.
But this insignificant and ugly tuber has the ability to produce better juice than any other plant on earth. That gives it its hole value.
Like a root out of dry ground
I find it rather odd that Jesus talk about himself as the true Vine. The prophet Isaiah said about Jesus in 53:2 “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.”
The tuber of the Vine is not good for tool-making or for furniture. All you can use it for is fuel for the fire. You can carve it and human hands can’t use it in any way. All it can do it to give thirsty men relief with the juice from its fruit.
Jesus was like that actually! He was no good at politics. He was far too honest and straight forward and not nationalistic enough. There were no deceitfulness in his speech and he didn’t take sides that he would profit from. That’s why he didn’t try politics.
He was no good at being a high Priest under the old Covenant either. He had not much room for old dead rituals. He was full of flowing life! He wasn’t a dogmatic man. He was the source of the living Water. He gave from its richness without thinking about whether the time or place was proper.
This is why he was only good at being our Lord and Savour. He was meant to carry the enormous burden of the blood red sins of this world.
He was meant to walk to the Cross on Calvary and to die there for our sins so that we could be saved. He was impossible as priest because he was the true sacrificial lamb. He didn’t fit into the political system, but he fitted as an open channel between heaven and earth, between God and Man.
And then, when he hang on the Cross the Prophet Isaiah saw him several hundred years earlier and writes in 53:2b-3
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like on from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not”
An outcast
Jesus was an outcast, hanging there on the Cross. All those who had been following him and believed in him were very sad and their spirits were broken. With human eyes, He was less worth than the soldiers watching him die.
And still, it was at this very moment, and at that very place, the Cross, he won the biggest victory of all times. It was there on the Cross he fulfilled the greatest mission of all times. The prophet Isaiah continues his description. (v4-)
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,…But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him (v10) Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his live a guilt offering, he will se his offspring and prolong his days.”
Beaten up
Jesus was beating almost beyond recognition. His forhead was bleeding from the crown of thorns they had put on him and his face was swollen from all the beating. His back was also bleeding and his ankles and wrists were nailed to the cross.
But in this maltreated body a Spirit dwelled who was larger and more beautiful than all others. That body had a mind that was not of this world. It was this great spirit and mind that loved when everybody else hated. It was this great spirit and mind that prayed when everybody else was cursing. He had the strength to meet the lies with the truth and he met the violence with humbleness. He met the full force of all the sins and evil of this world with a mind full of purity and holiness. That’s why he won the total victory at that moment. His body was broken down, but his Spirit was stronger and more beautiful than everybody else’s This was the secret in his life. This was the secret in his redemptive death.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews says in 9:14 “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”
The most essential
The life of Jesus, The Spirit of Jesus is healing to the sick and life to the dead. It is strength for the weak and comfort for the afraid. The Spirit of Jesus is the most essential for both you and me, now and for eternity. There is nothing as great as being a branch in the true Vine. Made part of that Vine thru the Holy Spirit and filled with His life.
Fellowship with Jesus
Jesus told many parables about the fellowship between himself and his disciples. I don’t think there is a better one and this one, about the Vine and the branches. The Vine and the branches are full of the same life. The same sap flows thru them and they exist for the same reason; to bear fruit.
And they are all dependent on one another.
The Vine is dependent on the branches to bear its reach fruit and the branch needs the Vine to bear fruit. Nor the Vine or the branches can function without the other.
In this text in John 15 there is one thing that Jesus emphasizes more than anything else. That is to remain in Him. It is natural for him to emphasize this as he does, because it is this it all comes down to.
What does it mean then, to remain in Jesus?
More than His teaching
To remain in Jesus must be something more than just to remain in His teaching and to remain in the teaching about Him. The teaching, the theology is very important, just as the pipes is important in a building. But pipes without water is useless. The teaching of Jesus is also useless without His Spirit. You can be so preoccupied with the teaching about Jesus that it replaces the stream of life flowing from Him to your heart. You can be a professor of theology without having a living relationship with Him who the theology is all about.
The theology is important, but to remain in Jesus is something more.
Something more than the Church
To remain in Jesus is also something more than just to remain in the Church. I believe in the holy, catholic church. A church that embraces all who have come to faith in Jesus Christ and accepted Him as Lord and Master. The Bible says that the Church is ONE and universal. I believe in this organism which independent of time and place, bind all believers together and make us ONE.
I also believe in the local church as a manifestation of the universal, ONE Church. The local church with the preaching of the Word of God, the baptism, communion and fellowship is only a sign of, and a help for us to reach the true reality, Jesus himself.
Some of us have perhaps only found the signs of Jesus. You have become a member of the church without really have found Jesus. Some of us have maybe slipped away from the Lord and got lost in the troubles of life. It is one thing to be faithful to your church, it is another to be truly faithful to the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ.
It is one thing to have fellowship with Christians and a completely other thing to have true fellowship with God himself, through the Holy Spirit.
More than your best ability
To remain in Jesus is also something more than doing your best at obeying his will.
It is true that obedience to the Lord is closely related to Salvation. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes in 5:8-9 “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
And Jesus himself says in John 8:31-32 “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
It is only on the road of obedience that you can remain in close relationship with Jesus,
But not even the most serious attempt to obey Jesus is the same as to remain in Him. To obey him is One part of the relationship with Jesus, and one part of the secret. But obedience is not the same as remaining in Jesus, because obedience has focus of what you and I have to do and a living, true faith always has focus on what Jesus has done and on what he is doing.
The secret to remain in Jesus is the inner stream of Life
Then what is the inner connection between the Vine and the branches? It is not the fibres in the wood, because even the dry branches share the fibres with the Vine.
The connection between the Vine and the branches is Life itself. It is the stream of Life that day after day flow thru the Vine and out into the branches. It is this stream of Life that brings forth new leafs in the spring, to produce flowers and then fruit. This stream of Life makes it all and it does so without effort and the branches can do nothing else but to receive and give away what the Vine brings them. Then, almost automatically they produce good fruit.
But when this stream of Life is cut of, the branch dies. The flowers fall off and the fruit dries up and fall off. About these branches Jesus says: (John 15:6b) “such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.”
Now then, what is the inner secret about the relationship between the Risen Jesus Christ and the children of God here on earth?
The secret is also the stream of Life, but a different stream of Life. We are connected with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in John 7:38 “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.”
I think we forget this from time to time. It is a risk that we from time to time get a faith that is too mechanical, shallow and human. Sometimes our faith is no more than just a legal contract between the sinner and God, instead of letting it be what it really is. It is a new birth by the Holy Spirit! All our sins is forgiven and we get a new, fresh relationship with the Living Lord, Jesus Christ.
This is what happened on the first day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. Thru the Holy Spirit the Risen Jesus came and dwelled in the hearts of his disciples. The Spirit created a new bridge between the Risen Lord and his disciples here on earth.
To remain in Jesus means that this intimacy with Jesus thru the Holy Spirit is kept totally clean and open. To remain in Jesus means that you let the Holy Spirit do what He wants in your life. When you do that you will find that the teaching about Jesus will get more alive for you. Going to church will be more joyful and it will be much easier to do the will of the Lord!
When we thru a personal experience of the power of the Cross and of the Spirit of Pentecost, get to know the living and resurrected Jesus we will be lifted high above the level of your own efforts. We get a new focus in our lives. The overflowing life of Jesus starts flow into our hearts. Then, and only then is the miracle happening. We become branches of the true Vine.! We become living parts of the body of Christ!
This is a true miracle. Only the Almighty God can do this. But he lets us be present when it happens just as the branch is present when it becomes the living connection between the vine and the grapes. The branch is there only as a connection or channel. It receives what is given to it, and it gives away what it has received. Thru this simple procedure the branch is part of bring forth a new harvest. It is even part of creating new life, because in every grape, is the seed for a new vineyard.
I believe that we here have the answer to our own sanctification. When the Spirit of God is free to do what He wants in our lives, the miracle is done both in our lives but also thru our lives. But if we loose this living connection with Jesus, our faith and all we do for him is nothing more than dead deeds. A Holy God never bless something that we have done on our own without him. He does only bless the work he is part of.
It is a huge difference between trying to be, trying work and trying to do in you own power, and just simply be a channel for the power of God. To bear fruit without the Spirit of God, no man can! But when you let the Spirit of God do His work, new life is created, both in the church and in your life. And I think that sometimes we just can stand aside watching what God is doing with such simple means when we allow him.
To be born is just the beginning
To remain in Jesus is something you and I have to work on. Everything doesn’t work out by itself just because we were grafted into the true Vine. Your spiritual life doesn’t have to be ok, just because it once was! That’s the mistake of the old Testament when the people of God thought that all was OK just because the Temple were grand and the sacrifices were more than ever.
When Jesus so strongly urge us to remain in Him, this must also mean that there is a risk that even we believers, who have the stream of life in our hears, can drift away from the living relationship with the Living Lord.
Jesus is not talking about the cut off branches just to make an accurate description of how you cultivate your vineyard. He is talking about the cut off branches because it is a reality behind that image. Even you can be one of those cut off branches if you persist in your sin and by so doing, loose the living connection with Jesus Christ.
To remain in Jesus has nothing to do with the past, not even yesterday. It is always about the present, it is about this very second. It is in the present we make mistakes and sin that leads us away from the Lord. I thing we all have holy moments in our past. Times when we met the Lord in a very special way. A time when we were healed or received gifts from the Holy Spirit.
That holy memory we carry in hour heart, that holy experience God in His mercy gave you and me, was meant to lead us into a deeper and richer fellowship with Jesus. But far too often, instead of doing just that, that experience has become the focus of our thoughts and of our testimony. And if that happends, our spiritual growth stops, just after the most wonderful spiritual experience of your life! The experience became the goal in itself and we got focused on that. The result is, we didn’t remain in Jesus. It is always He who must be the centre of your life, not the gifts He gives us, or the spiritual experience He gives us.
To remain in Jesus means that we allow His Holy Spirit to feed our mind and heart with Jesus. Then we will be preserve our faith and we will be saved both from our sins, but also from our holy experiences or anything else that could come between The Lord and ourselves.
Today, and here is the time and place when you can re-establish the living channel between you and the Lord. Here is the place when you can flush your pipes clean so that the living water can flow freely in you and thru you. Today is the time when you once again can become a branch in the true Vine, an branch that bears rich fruit.
Today is also the time for you who never have been a branch in the true Vine. You, who never have known Jesus before. There is plenty of room for you also! The Lord doesn’t want anything on earth more, than to give you eternal life in your heart.
A M E N
