Monthly Archives: October 2021

DISCONNECTED!

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DISCONNECTED!

“If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15:6-8 NIV.

The vine leaves glistened silver in the moonlight as Jesus and His disciples made their way through the vineyard towards the olive grove. Jesus bent down and lifted up a fallen branch that had become disconnected from the vine. The leaves were withered and turning brown. The branch was dry and brittle. It was obvious that the branch was dead.

Turning to His disciples, He showed them the branch and taught them a simple object lesson. ‘See this branch,’ He said softly. ‘It is lifeless because it broke off the vine. It has no value now; all it’s good for is to be burnt. The only way a branch can bear fruit is to remain attached to the vine. You are just like the branch of a vine. If you maintain your connection with me, you will bear fruit just like the branch that remains attached to the vine.’

Amazingly, remaining attached requires no hard work while becoming detached takes effort. To break one’s connection with Jesus means that you have to reach the conclusion that there is no value in continuing to trust Him and then actively to walk away from Him, renouncing the truth you once believed and turning back to the worthless ways of the world.

To remain in the vine is to keep trusting in Him and allowing His word to shape your thinking and acting. How does the branch remain in the vine? By doing nothing except receiving the life of the vine as it pushes up into the branch. The water and nutrients that flow from the vine into the branches provide the nourishment that keeps the branch alive and supple, and eventually produces the grapes in season which is the only function of the vine.

Like the vine, fruitfulness is the primary function of the believer. What is fruit? Many Christian teachers believe that the measure of fruitfulness is reckoned in terms of the number of “souls” one wins to the Lord, like Red Indians counting scalps. Is this what the Word teaches us?

Fruit is what reveals the nature of the tree. “‘Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit…Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.'” Matthew 7:15-17; 20 NIV.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control…” Galatians 5:22, 23 NIV.

The Pharisees had issues with Jesus because He healed on the Sabbath. To “work” on the Sabbath was abhorrent to them while, to Jesus,  to do a work of kindness was what the Sabbath was all about. Why? Because works of kindness revealed His true nature as the Son of the Father. They called Him Beelzebub because of His good works. He called them children of the devil because of their hatred, and they plotted to murder Him. It was the fruit that revealed the nature of the tree.

Fruitfulness takes no effort but to remain in the vine, and the fruit of remaining in the vine is answered prayer. The secret of answered prayer is not persuading God by much prayer but by the branch remaining in the vine and the word remaining in the branch, the nourishment of the word flowing from the vine to the branch.

This is not labour but rest!

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

THE TRUE VINE

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THE TRUE VINE

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:1-5 NIV.

Jesus and His disciples had left the upper room where they had eaten their last Passover meal together. They made their way through the dark streets of the city towards the olive grove called Gethsemane. As they walked slowly through the vineyard outside the city wall, Jesus must have stopped and fingered the vine leaves, recalling His intimate knowledge of the Scriptures.

Israel was symbolically God’s vineyard. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sang a song about His vineyard – “I will sing of the one I love, a song about His vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut a winepress as well.”

Imagine God’s disappointment when, after all the preparation and care He had given His vineyard, it produced a crop so bad that it was worthless to Him. “Then He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it only yield bad?”

Since His people had failed to fulfil His destiny for them, He had no option but to send them into exile, away from His presence in His temple and from their land so that they would learn to distance themselves from the idols and the wickedness of the surrounding nations.

“Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.

“The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” Isaiah 5:1-7 NIV.

There was only one “vine” that could satisfy the desire of the Father for good grapes and abundant fruitfulness — Jesus Christ, His own Son. Instead of Israel, He was the true vine that represented and took the place of God’s people who had failed to live up to His expectation. Jesus was not only the true vine but the way for God to replant His vineyard and reap crops of good grapes through those who would believe in Him.

The way of fruitfulness is the way of abiding or remaining in union with the true vine. Being joined to the vine and remaining in fellowship with Him is the only guarantee that we will produce the fruit that will bring delight to the heart of the Father. The vine, the stock, is perfect and needs no cultivation. The branches are the ones that need constant attention so that they will be as fruitful as they can possibly be. 

The vinedresser has ways of improving the fruitfulness of the branches. He lifts up, cleans and reattaches the branches that trail down into the dust, not “cutting them off” but treating them so that they will become fruitful again. He prunes the fruitful branches, removing everything that will hinder the production of grapes.

The branches have no other responsibility but to remain in the vine. As long as we are attached to the vine and receiving the sap of its life, we shall be fruitful — revealing the nature of the vine in our lives. The Father’s role is to cultivate and prune the branches according to His skill as the vinedresser so that the fruit we bear is the fruit that reveals the true nature of the vine.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

LOVE’S GREATEST TEST

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LOVE’S GREATEST TEST

“‘You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens so that, when it does happen, you will believe.

“I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Come now; let us leave,'” John 14:28-31 NIV.

Strange words for the bewildered disciples! How could they grasp what was foreign to their experience? But for the Holy Spirit, who would make sense of it all as time went on, this entire interlude would be lost to them.

“Going away and coming back”? And yet He kept talking about dying! No one in their experience had ever died and came back again. As for being glad because He was going away! That made no sense at all. If they loved Him, how could they be glad because He was leaving them?

Ah, but they did not yet understand the implications of all these mysteries! This was not only about Him; it was also about them. Going to the Father had huge spin-offs for them.

Salvation accomplished, Jesus would return to the Father to present His blood as a perpetual sacrifice for sin. He would be exalted to the highest place and be given a name above every other name. He would take up His role in the presence of the Father, representing them to Him as High Priest and Mediator. He would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever as His other self, to be in them, to teach them about Him and to transform them into His likeness.

Is it any wonder that He told them to be happy because He was going to the Father?

However, between the present moment and His return to the Father lay the biggest test of His love for the Father — the cross! Time was running out for Him. He had an appointment to keep that would be perfectly timed to coincide with the exact moment when the first Passover lamb would be slaughtered by the high priest. Time with His disciples was coming to an end. He had given them everything He could while He was with them. It was now over to the Holy Spirit to help them internalise what they had heard during His time with them.

The prince of this world was poised to strike; he thought he was gearing up for his greatest victory, not realising, even from experience, that he could never take Jesus on and win. How many times had he already tried and come out of it with egg on his face!

He had his human cronies lined up; Judas the traitor, the religious hierarchy, Caiaphas the high priest, the temple guard and Roman soldiers, Pilate, Herod and the fickle mob — quite a formidable array from a human perspective! Who were Jesus’ supporters? No one, because even His most loyal followers deserted Him! He took on the world and the evil spiritual forces behind it single-handed.

Jesus made a most interesting statement. What was He about to prove? Not that He loved the world but that He loved the Father and authenticated that love by being obedient to Him to the very dregs of the cross. Why not the world? He loved the world through His obedience to the Father.

What was the point of Adam’s test in the Garden of Eden? There was nothing morally wrong with eating fruit from a tree in the garden. It was not the tree but the instruction that counted. God set up a test to check the strength of Adam’s love for Him. Love sets boundaries within which the beloved can move freely without fear. The strength of love is demonstrated by the beloved’s willingness to live within those boundaries because he trusts the one who loves him. Adam failed the test.

For Jesus, the test of His love for the Father was His willingness to obey Him to the death without resistance — even at the hands of the one who hated Him the most. His entire human life was a declaration that He loved the Father and that He loved Him through the bitterest suffering any human can endure. Period!

“When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly. “He Himself bore our sins” in His body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness: “by His wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:23, 24 NIV.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

PERPLEXED!

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PERPLEXED!

“You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens so that, when it does happen you will believe. I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me, but he comes so that the world may learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me. Come now, let us leave.” John 14:28-31.

Imagine the disciples reclining around the supper table, listening to Jesus. What was He on about? Obviously something sinister was about to happen, but they could not figure out what it was. He kept talking about “going away”. Where was He planning to go?

Although things did get a bit hot at times, especially when He spoke bluntly to the religious leaders, making them really mad with Him, the disciples were enjoying their association with their rabbi. It was better than the monotony of fishing except when He came by and the fish came to them as though He were out there inviting them into their nets.

Life was quite exiting. Apart from His teaching, the like of which these men had never heard, Jesus did so many unexpected things, like walking on water and calling a decaying corpse out of the tomb, that every day brought new thrills. Never a dull moment when Jesus was around! And then they even got to do miracles now and then although they were not as good at it as He was.

All in all, it was a good life, so what was all this talk about suffering and going away? To make matters worse, they were supposed to be happy that He was going away! How could they be happy when He was the centre of their lives? If He left, their lives would fall apart. They would have to go back to where they left off before He intruded, and that was unthinkable after three years of walking with Him. They could never go back and be who they were before; but they could never go on without Him either.

Was Jesus upset because these men were so uncomprehending that all He got was blank stares? It seems not because He persevered with them, knowing that His words were being stored away in their minds for the day when the light would come on. It was His task to prepare them before the time so that, when it happened, they would know exactly what He was talking about during those hours in the Upper Room.

Where was Jesus going? According to Him, back to the Father. But He was still young. Why leave now? However, although Jesus was fully man, His life on earth had a different purpose from all other people. He was sent from the Father; He had a mission to accomplish; when He had completed what He had come to do, He would return to the Father. Rather than having a lifespan to live out on earth, He could go home when His work was done.

There was a sense in which He came to start something which He could not continue because it was not His job. He could not live within people. That would be the work of the Holy Spirit. He had to make way for the Holy Spirit once His part of the plan had been accomplished. If He did not return to the Father after His work was done, the Holy Spirit could not be sent to do in those who believed in Him what He had done through Jesus during His years on earth as a man.

Jesus would return, not in person and not yet. He would send the Spirit as His “other self” to indwell believers and empower them to “be” Jesus to the world. Jesus would come again in person in due time but, in the interim, it would be the work of the Spirit to continue what He had begun.

At this point, none of His disciples understood the plan. They simply listened because their rabbi was talking to them. Later on, however, when it happened, they would remember this moment and the words that puzzled them now, and they would believe.

Jesus said to them, in effect…

“And, by the way, all the stuff that is about to happen has got nothing to do with me. It’s the devil’s stuff, not mine. Cheer up! He can’t touch me. All that will happen is that the world out there that refuses to believe who I am, will finally get it that I did this for the Father because I love Him.  To show it, I did exactly what He told me to do. Nothing more, nothing less! Now, let’s be going.”

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

PEACE THAT MAKES NO SENSE

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PEACE THAT MAKES NO SENSE

“‘All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.'” John 14:25-27 NIV.

It’s no wonder Jesus did not give up on His disciples! He knew that the Holy Spirit would do the job when the time came.

Everything He taught them was in seed form. The Word of God is seed. When it is sown in the soil of the heart, it will grow when the conditions are right. There was so much Jesus had to teach them but it would be a progression of experiences and understanding through the Holy Spirit’s ministry that would bring them to maturity as time went on.

God is never in a hurry. It takes time for an oak tree to grow. It was His determined purpose to cultivate “oak trees”, people who were strong and stable so that they would be witnesses to Jesus, putting Him on display as their lives were progressively made whole through His grace at work in them.

“(He will) provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendour.” Isaiah 61:3 NIV.

The word Jesus used for the Holy Spirit, translated Advocate or Helper is an interesting one — in the Greek, parakletos, meaning one who is called alongside. The Christian life is viewed in Scripture as a journey — hence it was originally called “The Way” (Acts 9:2). As one walks, the burdens of life cause one to totter and lean to one side or the other, making one’s walk unstable and often pushing one off the path.

The Holy Spirit is “called alongside” to help shoulder the burden so that one can walk upright instead of leaning over and losing one’s footing or leaving the path. A beautiful picture of the Holy Spirit’s ministry in the believer! He does not judge or accuse — that is the Accuser’s disposition because that is all he knows. The Holy Spirit is the strength and support God has provided to enable us to walk a straight path of righteousness and truth as He gets under the burden with us and guides us along our journey.

Apart from the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ greatest gift to His people is the gift of His peace. The disciples had watched Him through the years when He was insulted, maligned and falsely accused by His opponents, without ever seeing in Him a glimmer of revenge or retaliation. He spoke the truth to them and allowed the truth to be their judge. They had seen Him live a life of serenity and peace in the midst of every kind of storm, and now He was assuring them that they would experience His peace — not the kind of “peace” offered by the world.

What kind of peace does the world give? The best that comes from the world is the “peace” that happens when there is a temporary lull in our unpredictable circumstances. We enjoy it while we can because we know it will not last. We know that our circumstances can change at the drop of a hat, plunging us once again into worry, anxiety, fear and frustration.

Jesus’ peace is not dependant on circumstances but rather on our standing in God. His death for us removes the reason for our alienation from the Father and we are now able to rest in His love for us, knowing that we are completely in His care.

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 5:1

His peace provides sure footing for us because it stands on two feet: peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1) and the peace of God that surpassed understanding as we commit our circumstances to Him (Philippians 4:6, 7). It is the peace of one who knows he is not an orphan but a son.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7

In the midst of the turmoil they were about to be plunged into, His disciples had His promise that His peace would be their strength and support no matter what happened. Whether they experienced it right then or not is uncertain but the days were coming when they would face their own “Calvary”. By that time, they would have made their acquaintance with the Holy Spirit and learned to rest in Him in the storms, and experience the unearthly peace that makes no sense outside of Jesus but is real anyway.

How much they needed it, and so do we!

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.