Appointed To Bear Fruit: A 90 Day JourneySample

God Is at Work

Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus declares who He is saying: “I am...I am the Resurrection and the Life. I am the Good Shepherd.” All of these declarations provide important insights into who Jesus is. He is God Incarnate, who is fulfilling the Father’s plan of salvation. Moments before His arrest, Jesus once again teaches His disciples an important reality: “I am the True Vine.” In the Upper Room, He taught His disciples that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him. And that He is also in His followers. This is a great statement. Jesus talks about the intimate union between the Father and the Son, as well as the fact that He will dwell within us (John 14:20). The disciples struggled on many occasions to understand Jesus’ teaching. On this evening, they are once again struggling. After teaching about the truth of His relationship with the Father and our relationship to the Son, Jesus gives them an illustration that will open their minds to the important truth that He is teaching. 

When Jesus says that He is the True Vine, He is not saying that there are false vines. Instead, He is differentiating between true and shadow. The Old Testament Temple worship, with its sacrifices, are pictures or shadows of the True Sacrifice that will be given to redeem us from our sins. This sacrifice was ultimately fulfilled in Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The Old Testament portrays Israel as a vine (Ps. 80:8-16; Isa. 5:1-7). Israel is to be a people set aside by God to point the world towards the one true God and away from their idolatry. Because Israel sinned and worshipped false gods, the Father sent His Son as the True Vine to bring His salvation to the world. Jesus is the True Vine. He alone is the fulfillment of God’s plan to redeem the nations. The vine exists to produce a harvest. Through the life-giving work of Jesus, a harvest will be reaped that will fill the storehouse of heaven with the souls of the redeemed.

And this harvest happens at the behest of the Father. For Jesus says, “The Father is the vinedresser.” The vinedresser desires a harvest, so he plants and tends the vine. So too the Father has sent the Son and has worked to bring the Son to the cross. Through the sacrifice of the Son on the cross, the Father’s work will achieve its goal. Throughout Jesus’ life, the Father has watched over Him. No one could capture or harm Jesus before His time. Therefore, Jesus willingly submitted to the Father, the vinedresser. On several occasions, Jesus had the opportunity to avoid the cross, but He rejected Satan’s attempts to derail the Father’s plan (Matt. 4:1-11). In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus will wrestle in prayer but finally emerges victorious saying, “Not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). The Son submitted to the Father, just as a vine submits to the vinedresser.

The Father, as vinedresser, shows how active He is in our salvation. A vinedresser plants a vine and nurtures it with the expectation that it will bear fruit. Planting a vine is costly, but it’s the only way to gather a harvest. The Father has invested much; therefore, He is actively making sure the harvest is produced. Since before the creation of the world, the Father has been at work to produce a harvest through the Son. And even now, the Father is still at work so that we produce fruit for the glory of His name. 

Application:  How are you seeing the Father working to produce a harvest?