Fruitful

 

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples” John 15:1-8 

When Jesus says that “I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser”, He was laying the foundation for the fruitful life. The vinedresser was responsible for the overall care of the vineyard, including the nurturing, trimming and defending for its ultimate growth in fruitfulness. The vine was the source of nutrition and life to the branches; without that source, the branches could not bear fruit (see verse 5). The use of the vine metaphor is not uncommon to the Jew; God regularly referred to them as His vineyard.

Fruit, more fruit, much fruit

One of the most important lessons Jesus taught His disciples during the last week of His life was how to be fruitful. In John 15, the principle at the center of spiritual fruitfulness is the principle of abiding. The Greek word is meno and it means to remain, to continue, to dwell. Spiros Zhodiates defines it as to be and remain united with him, one with him in heart, mind, and will. The idea is that a branch cannot exhibit spiritual life unless there is a continual feeding from the vine. Jesus says He is the true vine, meaning genuine or real, suggesting that there are false vines (foreign vines in Jeremiah 2:21). The more connected a believer is to the true vine, the more fruit is produced. When the vinedresser sees there is no fruit, He removes the branch and the one that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it bears more fruit (verse 2). The vinedresser is not satisfied with just fruit, but He wants more fruit (verse 2). Ultimately, the true disciple proves it by bearing much fruit (verse 8). 

The key to discipleship and bearing fruit is found in verse 7 where Jesus includes the Word of God as part of the equation: If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. In John 8:31-32, “So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue [meno] in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’" Jesus says if the believer is vitally connected to not only the life of Jesus, but also His Word, he can ask of God and it will be accomplished. This fruitfulness is the proof of discipleship. 

A faithless heart

Through the prophet, Isaiah (5:1-7), God used the vineyard metaphor to illustrate not only the care of the vinedresser (the Father), but also the failure of Israel to produce good grapes. God asks the question, “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it?” The conclusion, found in verse 7 is that the good grapes of justice and righteousness were not present, so God’s verdict was that they were “worthless ones”. There is an interesting interplay when you look at the original Hebrew. "Justice" (mispat) was replaced with "bloodshed" (mispoh.), and instead of "righteousness" (tsedaqa) there was "distress" (tsaaqa). So, what happened? God removed His hedge of protection and allowed outside forces to corrupt the heart of the nation and stopped pruning and ceased the clouds from raining. In Isaiah 1:21, “How the faithful city has become a harlot, she who was full of justice! Righteousness once lodged in her, but now murderers.” For Israel, the fruit of a healthy relationship with God is justice and righteousness since He is actively caring for it.

Hosea exposes the heart of the problem in Hosea 10:2; it was a faithless heart. The Hebrew word translated faithless is chalaq and it means divided. When Israel allied itself with unholy nations, their hearts became divided and they thus became faithless. In James 1:8, Scripture tells us that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. When Israel was in bondage to Egypt, the people’s alliances were directed to the Lord out of their pressing need for deliverance and God was always aware of their needs, as Psalm 105:24 says, “And He caused His people to be very fruitful and made them stronger than their adversaries.” The fruitful life is derived from being centered on the strength and ability of God who is the ultimate producer of spiritual fruit.

The surviving remnant

In Isaiah 37, Jerusalem was surrounded by Assyrians, led by King Sennacherib with the intention to get the inhabitants, led by King Hezekiah to surrender. King Hezekiah reached out to the prophet, Isaiah for Godly counsel. Although Jerusalem was greatly outnumbered by Sennacherib, Isaiah told him that God would deliver Israel from the hands of the Assyrians and Hezekiah went to the temple to pray. In verse 20, “Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone, Lord, are God.” God’s response came in verse 21, when God answered, “Because you have prayed to Me about Sennacherib king of Assyria”, God answered the prayer by promising His care of Jerusalem while being surrounded by its enemy. In verse 30, above, God promises that the inhabitants will have enough food to feed themselves without going outside the city walls to plant and reap in the first and second years. In the third year, they could plant and reap their harvest. The key verse is 31, which is the fulfillment of God’s care, that “the surviving remnant of Judah will again take root downward and bear fruit upward”. By rooting themselves deep into the provisions of God, Jerusalem would bear fruit visible to all.

In Matthew 21:33-45, Jesus spoke a parable to illustrate how the Jewish nation was rejecting their prophets and their Messiah (John 1:11), again using the vineyard as a means to teach the fruitfulness of God’s kingdom. It is clear that the reference is to Israel as the vine-growers and their progressive rejection of prophets (slaves) and then even the Messiah (landowner’s son) in order to “seize his inheritance” (verse 38). Verse 39 says that they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him, a reference to the cross located outside the city of Jerusalem. The verdict against the vine-growers would be “a wretched end”, a reference to the destruction of the Jewish leadership of Jesus’s day in 70 AD. Then in verse 43, the kingdom of God is taken away from this wicked generation and given to a people that will produce the fruit of it which is a reference to the church, made up of both Jews and Gentiles. Fruitfulness is the ultimate measure of success in the kingdom of God.

No fruit, bad fruit

In a number of Old Testament verses (Jeremiah 8:13, Hosea 9:10, 16), the fig tree is a symbol of Israel. Jesus was illustrating the reality that Israel was alive because it had leaves, but it had no fruit. He was teaching His disciples that Israel’s lack of fruit would result in the ultimate destruction of the Jewish leadership and national entity in 70 A.D. when the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed. Fruitfulness is the by-product of faith and a willingness to trust God for all things.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:17-20), Jesus teaches on the subject of fruitfulness by looking at the tree bearing the fruit and the quality of that fruit. A good tree always bears good fruit while a bad tree always bears only bad fruit. The ultimate verdict for the bad tree is that it must be “cut down and thrown into the fire”, speaking about judgement. Most scholars agree this is a reference to the Pharisees, who were not teaching the Law of Moses, but were “transgressing the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matthew 15:3). In Jeremiah 12:10, it says, “Many shepherds have ruined My vineyard, they have trampled down My field; they have made My pleasant field a desolate wilderness.” When Matthew 7:20 says “you will know them by their fruit”, He was teaching that a teaching ministry is evaluated on the basis of its fruit.

Righteousness yields fruit

The foundation of abiding in the vine is trust. Mount Zion, another name for Jerusalem, is symbolic of a believer’s vertical relationship with God. In Psalm 125, the writer exalts that relationship as eternal (abides forever) and that it is the source of those who are upright in heart. Abiding produces a victorious life because it puts its total trust in God and His ability rather than man’s. Righteousness is experienced by the believer as he operates by faith in the gospel, trusting in the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, rather than himself. In Romans 1:17, Paul speaks of the gospel in saying, “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." The righteous man is a fruitful man as Proverbs 12:12 relates, “The wicked man desires the booty of evil men, but the root of the righteous yields fruit.”