The Vine And His Branches Series

And I think the same thing happens with John. He’s retelling the exact conversation as he heard it but he’s ignoring all the details of where he heard it because those details don’t relate to the events that actually happened.

What I find interesting is that Jesus often used common things to represent and remind us of spiritual things and when we see the common things our minds tend go back to the things He said.

When I was only about five or six years old my mum and us four small children were moving away from a really dumpy apartment in Toronto which was owned by a drunken old lady. As we were about to leave I remember this woman gave me an American nickel, you know the one with the buffalo on the back and she said, “Whenever you see that old buffalo on a nickel I want you to think of me.” Now listen, that was over fifty years ago and I still think of that miserable old woman every time I see an American nickel.

And do you know what? Jesus used the exact same technique when He said to His disciples, “I am the true vine.” He was using something very familiar to bring something else to the disciple’s mind.

Look at verses 1 to 3 again where He says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.”

Jesus tells us He’s not just the vine but He is the true vine, His Father is the vine dresser and we are the branches. Well, the statement that He is the vine and they are the branches doesn’t really affect us the way it would them because they saw vineyards all the time and besides that we also miss the religious significance of what He was saying. You see, the Jews thought of Israel as being the true vine and they based this on several scriptures in the Old Testament.

For instance, in Jeremiah 2 God said to Israel, “I planted you as a choice vine.” In Ezekiel on 15 different occasions the prophet likens Israel to a vine.” In Hosea 10 the prophet said, “Israel is a luxuriant vine.” And then in Psalm 80:8 says, “Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it.”

And the one section that really tells of God’s evaluation of Israel at the time of Jesus is a prophetic passage that’s found in Isaiah 5. It says, “The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.” And there the prophet depicts God as the farmer who had planted the best-looking, best-watered and best-tended vineyard in the entire Mediterranean Basin. The grapes that grew were plump and heavy with the juices that would lead to a bumper harvest, but when the day of harvest came and the farmer pulled off some grapes to sample them, he discovered that the grapes were bitter. I mean, they were terrible, sour and useless. Something had gone terribly wrong and so, in a disappointed and heartbreaking fury, the farmer dismantles the vineyard and plowed the whole thing under.