"I am the Vine," said Jesus, "the True Vine."

It must have astonished the disciples to hear Him say it. To appreciate just how astonished, we need to recall a little history and use a little imagination.

BACKGROUND: I - HISTORY

As the lion is a national symbol of England, the bear of Russia and the rising sun of Japan, so a national symbol of Israel was the vine. A very fitting symbol it had once been, for God had planted Israel in the world as a farmer plants a vine, in expectation of lovely fruit from it.

Recalling how God led His people Israel out from Egypt and planted them in the land of Canaan, the psalmist wrote: "You brought a vine out of Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches; it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River." (Psalm 80:8-13)

The fruit for which God looked from His peoples' life was fruit of a spiritual nature, of course. Irrigated by His own Spirit, fertilised by His truth, cultivated by His mercies and His judgments, God looked to see the fruits of righteousness and truth appear. As we have observed before, Israel was an "elect" people, chosen to know, show and share God with the world.

But among the prophets there is heard often the sound of a lament - God's hopes of His people were repeatedly disappointed. Isaiah describes God as a husbandman (Jesus does too, remember in John 15:1), a vine dresser who has done everything - but everything - to produce a pure and fruitful stock ... and with what result?
"He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes."
"For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel," Isaiah went on (5:7), "and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!" (from the oppressed).

Planted in the world to be nourished in her life by intimacy with God, replete with the fruits of righteousness and truth and salvation so as to bless the world with these things, Israel turned out to be a degenerate growth.

She had failed. She had not produced the fruit; she had not delivered the goods. "I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure stock," God says through His prophet Jeremiah; "how then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?"

So this wild vine stood in need of remedial treatment; it needed to be pruned, drastically cut back, even replanted, so as to produce again.

In vision Isaiah saw a day when God would replant the vine. "In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots, and fill the whole world with fruit. In that day: 'A pleasant vineyard, sing of it! I, the LORD, am its keeper; every moment I water it. Lest any harm it, lest its leaves fail, I guard it night and day ...'"

The vision was fulfilled in Jesus! ... and His statement in John 15 is His announcement of it!

This then, is the bit of history.

BACKGROUND: II - IMAGINATION!

Now for the bit of imagination; think about the real-life situation in which Jesus said this.

At the end of ch.14, He has said, "Rise let us be going from here;" they were in the Upper Room when He said that. At the beginning of ch.18, we read, "Having said all this, Jesus went with His disciples across the Kidron Valley to where there was a garden."

All that lies between, then, was said while they were on the move. Assuming they left the Upper Room (on Mt. Zion) at the end of ch. 14, they would take the stepped road that led down over the Cheese-maker's Valley into the Temple Court, cross it, and leave through the Eastern gate on their way to the Kidron Valley. When in ch. 18 John says, "Jesus went forth with His disciples ..." it was by then from the Temple that they "went forth." Their walk took them past the Temple Gates. Huge gates they were - broad and high.

Can you see these twelve men crossing the empty moonlit square, standing silent awhile, dwarfed by the massive gates, looking up at them? Carved on them was their national symbol, a vine! The carving was exquisite, covered with gold leaf. The branches curved up to a height of twenty feet, and swept low almost to ground level, laden with great bunches of golden grapes, catching the sheen of the moonlight - for it was Passover time, and the moon was full. The tragedy of a people who had been chosen for so much but achieved so little had weighed heavily on the Lord's heart all through that last week of His earthly life; He was sadly aware how empty was this showy symbol. As the disciples gazed at it they heard Him say, quietly, "I am the Vine, the True Vine; and my Father is the husbandman."

Jesus is God's new planting in the field of the world. The vine had been pruned right back till He alone was its one remaining branch! Intimacy with God among men was at last complete; in human life the character of God had at last appeared, with no part dark or missing. Righteousness, truth and love had at last found full expression in human life. In Christ appeared at last the fruits, the full, pure, lovely fruits of blessedness, of which all may eat, by which all may truly live.

I bid you turn in your heart to Christ. All our hungry hearts ever craved is supplied in Him, and in abundance:

• Forgiveness for our sin
• Comfort for our sorrow
• Joy for our sadness
• Strength for our weakness
• Truth for our ignorance
• Love for our loneliness
• Light for our darkness
• Protection on our path
• and a Way - a living way that leads home.

He it is Who invites you to Him, not to taste merely the fruits He bears for you - as though, having tasted, you must depart again - but to abide with Him so as to feed upon a provision that shall never be withdrawn.

Because He is the vine He is life to all who are "grafted into Him." This is what it means, "I am the vine, the true vine."

Only a week or so earlier, Jesus had used this figure of speech in its more familiar sense. Matthew records a parable He told of a vineyard owner who planted a vineyard and looked to the servants he employed in it to harvest it for him; but they betrayed His trust in them and tried to seize it, even when he sent his own son to them. "The Kingdom of God shall be taken from you," He said then to the Jews, "and given to a nation who will produce its fruits." It was His solemn pronouncement, as God's appointed King, that the Jewish nation would be replaced in God's purpose for the world by the New Israel, the Church. (Matthew 21:33-44) Now, in the moonlight by the Temple Gates, He stood amid the ruins of that former vine and said, in effect, "Israel has failed. But God's purpose will not fail. I am the Vine - the true vine, and you - you who abide in my love - are the branches!" The vine is planted afresh. It will grow anew.

So Isaiah's vision is fulfilled: Israel, the new Israel, shall blossom, and put forth shoots, and fill the whole earth with its fruit" - as, in our missionary endeavour, it does today.

"By this," says Jesus, "my Father (the husbandman) is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples."

Clearly, in context, by "fruit" He meant the fruit Israel had failed to produce - the fruits of righteousness and truth and love etc. appearing in our life together as a fellowship of believers, such righteousness and truth and love as shall make us credible and effectual bearers of His salvation to the world.

In the verses that follow Jesus teaches us how we may maintain such fellowship with Him, so as to be sharers with Him in His redeeming work in the world. Let's briefly review that teaching.

ABIDING IN THE VINE

i. v. 2. "Every branch in Me that is not bearing fruit, He"... what? takes it away? No. There is a problem of translation here. The verb rendered "takes away" is the Greek word airo which means "to lift up"; it is everywhere else in the New Testament, with one exception, so translated. The Jews "took up" stones to stone Him, the sick "took up" their beds, the little boat was "taken up" into the larger vessel in which Paul and his companions prepared to ride out a storm, the angels "bear up" the Son of Man lest He dash His foot against a stone. But here it is mistranslated "takes away."

The translators did not realise the agricultural practice of those days which lay behind this use of the word, and they applied the meaning of the one exception to its normal usage, which is, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." But even there it should have been rendered "lifts up" for the reference is to the ritual of sacrifice, when the animal was "lifted up" to the altar on which it was slain.

In the East in those days the vines were trained to grow, not straight up like a tree in an orchard, but parallel to the ground, below the dew line, so as to catch the morning dew through the eight rainless summer months of the year. The branches had to be supported on trellises so the grapes did not fall to the ground and decay in the mulch; and the vine-dresser's daily duty was to "lift up" - back on to the supporting trellis - those branches that had fallen, so they might bear fruit. Jesus is not saying that a fruitless Christian will be rejected, but "lifted up" so as to be fruitful again.

This verse is not a threat of rejection to a believer who has become unfruitful, because the lamp of faith has burned low so as to be only smouldering, or because he has failed in his discipleship in some way, or because he has backslidden. It is a promise of renewal, an assurance of our heavenly vine dresser's care for our spiritual vitality.

Verse 2 is to be read so that its first two clauses have as their shared conclusion its last phrase:

Clause 1: "Every branch of mine that bears no fruit He lifts up ..."
Clause 2: "Every branch that does bear fruit He prunes ..." and the reason for both is ...
Conclusion: "that it may bear more fruit."

I am very sure about this. It is, I believe, a 'revelation' God was pleased to make to me in one of my my trips to the Holy Land..

If your discipleship has faltered or failed, do not fear to be cast away; look rather to be lifted up.

ii. v. 2 Even the fruitful branch must be pruned - cut back. The Lord's prunings are those times when he "cuts us back" - when He hacks this, that or the other out of our lives.

How often it happens just when we felt we were "in the groove" and getting somewhere! God still improves us by His disciplines, as He did so often His people of old. The hand of God is every bit as evident in the setbacks, the adversities, the harsh circumstances of our lives as it is in the advances, the triumphs and the joys we experience - and His love for us in them is just as real. He knows that if we experience nothing but easy success we shall soon grow "rank!"

iii. v. 3 It is the Word of Christ applied to our hearts that cleanses - not only when we first believe, but all through our Christian lives too.

The Gospel of Christ is our medicine, and we shall never grow beyond the need of it, even for a day. It is a medication we must take for life! That Gospel, that Word of judgment on our sins and the grace that releases us from it which first awakened faith in you is not now only for others who have not yet believed; it is for you today, as yesterday. We are to abide in Him Whose Word has cleansed and given us life. His Word is to abide in us. The means of His blessed ministry to us is always that same Gospel, and never deviates from it by one iota.

iv. v. 4 "Abide in me, and I in you"

I do not know - never in a thousand years could I hope to tell you - by what mystery the Father and the Son enter in and take up residence in the sanctuary of the human heart. It is enough that the promise is given. To the man or the woman who says simply, "O come to my heart, Lord Jesus," to that man, to that woman, God in all the splendour of His Being enters and is at home.

Let a person only hear the word of forgiveness Jesus speaks and answer, "O Master yes. I do believe You. Come, come to me," and the thing is done. Christ is in that person. That person is in Christ. At once they are a branch of the vine. A tender shoot, maybe; but soon to grow, as the water of life - Christ's own life - courses through their spiritual veins and begins producing the fruit of love, joy and peace, of longsuffering, goodness and kindness, of faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

He comes, not to find, but make our hearts worthy of His presence.

v. v. 5 He is not the stem, note, but the whole vine; we are branches - parts of Him. "You are to be as real a part of me as a branch is a real part of the vine," He says to us.

vi. v. 4 How, you ask, are we to do this? How do we "abide in Him"?

We "abide" in Christ when we revel in His companionship, trustingly and obediently.

The Lord's answer at first looks daunting: "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in Him" ... and ... "This is my commandment, that you love one another."

I once heard an evangelist quote this verse and then say, "One of our team has carefully gone through the gospels and traced 679 commandments given by the Lord Jesus." My heart sank, and inwardly I groaned. If we have to keep every last one of them to abide in Christ - if that is the way it has to be - then we might as well all give up ... now!

But that is not what Jesus means. "This is my commandment, that you love one another." As Paul said in Romans 13:9 "All the commandments are summed up in this one sentence, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' Love is the fulfilling of the Law."

"Love by induction," I call it. If you place one electric coil within another and pass a current through the outer one, a current will be "induced" in the inner coil, even though it has no connection to a power source! It happens all the time under the bonnet of your car when you are driving it. A coil fed from your battery with a low current induces a current in another coil placed within it that supplies the big fat spark to your spark plugs; it is an induced current.

We "abide in His love" so as to have His love induced in us as we rest in it ... trust in it ... believe in it ... count on it ... rely on it ... build our confidence on it as the one thing that stands sure though the Heavens fall.

His unchanging love is to be the one, sure spring at which we drink all our days.

Did your sin turn away His love from you before you believed?
Neither will He turn His love away from you because you sin still. Though you fail Him, and feel you have forfeited all claim upon His love by your repeated failure, still His love is the one remedy for your defilement, however often He must apply it.

He Himself said, "If your brother sin against you seven times in the day, and says, 'I repent' you must forgive him." And He who asks that of us will not do less Himself when it is we who sin and repent against Him!

"The perseverance of the saints is made up of ever new beginnings."

To His love we must again and again return as the only thing that can lift us up again, until the habit is so formed in us that everything - failure or triumph, loss or gain, judgment or mercy, sin or obedience - all things drive us to Him and His renewing love, and it becomes the living fountain at which we drink every day of our lives. Then we shall be abiding in Him.

That is the way we shall become fruitful, bearing both kinds of fruit:

1. The fruit of character-likeness to Christ
2. The fruit of faith in others through our testimony.

vii. v. 7 "If we abide in Him and His words abide in us, then we may ask what we will and it shall be done for us" - because then our desire will coincide with His. "Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly" and we shall have His mind on things.