Once you understand how grapevines produce, this passage take on new meaning.
Grapevines only produce grapes for one year. At the end of a year the old vine is trimmed away and a new vine is trained into it’s place. All of the other “sucker” vines are also trimmed off. This reoccurs every year, year after year. The heavy “trunk” of the grapevine that is rooted into the soil stays the same. When Jesus says He is the vine, it refers to the trunk of the grapevine. All branches come off the trunk, and receive their sustenance from the trunk. Almost everyone understands that. What we don’t always understand is the pruning process. Because I am not wise in this area, it seems to me that a few more branches would give me a larger crop of fruit, but it actually does the opposite.
What does it mean that God “prunes every branch that bears fruit”? I think it means that God narrows our focus to what is important from a kingdom perspective. I don’t see Jesus dawdling. He didn’t rush….He wasn’t in a hurry, but He didn’t dawdle either. I don’t think Jesus spent time doing unimportant things. We often get caught up in unimportant things, and stress over them as if life depended on them. Getting the grass mowed and the house painted, purchasing one more thing that we won’t really use, watching another round of drivel on the television. It’s not that these things are sinful, some of them are actually good…but they occupy the lower end of the significance scale. Who wants to see on their tombstone “he kept his yard looking really nice”? or “he never missed an episode of ‘America’s Got Talent'”? Those things need pruned if we are going to produce fruit for Jesus. And if we remain obedient when He identifies an area that needs pruning, it will increase our joy! (verse 11).
The fruitful vine will not be well received by those who listen to the devil. Jesus reminds us that He was opposed and rejected, persecuted and killed….and He was innocent of any wrong doing. I think we forget this sometimes, and we become confused when we see godly men and women being tortured and killed. Jesus told us it would happen this way. On a smaller scale, we see the world antagonizing the Gospel in other ways. In the last several years the IRS was directed to deny 501C3 status to organizations that supported a different political point of view…most of those organizations had ties to Christianity. Does that mean that the other political party is evil? Of course not, their points are as valid as our own. It simply means that we are living in a fallen world, and anything that honors God is resisted. That’s why I celebrate verse 26. Jesus knew that we would have trouble in this world. He knew we would be rejected and dismissed as “outdated” or “bigoted”. So He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us. Thank you Lord for your Spirit of Truth! He reassures us that we are doing what is right even when the world around us says something completely different. Lord, if it were not for the Holy Spirit, we would be so confused and disoriented right now…but He has kept us focused on You, and we praise You and Him for that. He has pointed out to us those things in our lives that we need to eliminate, and we are thankful for that. He has caused us to have greater effectiveness and fruitfulness in ministry, and again…we are thankful for that as well.
Loving the gardener,
PR