The True Vine (John 15:1a, 5a)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/12/2016 9:05 AM

My Worship Time                                                                                                 Focus:  The Vine

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  John 15:1a, 5a

            Message of the verse:  “I am the true vine…I am the vine

            As we have moved through the gospel of John we have seen that the words “I am” are used by Jesus seven times including what we are looking at today.  Now I want at this point, before we answer the question I posed in our last SD, to look at a section from John MacArthur’s sermon “I Am the True Vine” that speaks to these “I am” statements:  “The divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is here declared in verse 1: “I am the true vine,” He says.  And in verse 5 again: “I am the vine.”  How is this a claim to deity?  Because of the verb “I am.”

“Back in Exodus, chapter 3, when Moses came before God in the wilderness and asked His name, God said, “My name is I Am That I Am.”  The Tetragrammaton: the eternally existent one; the one of everlasting being; the always is, and always was, and always will be one.  Theologians call it the aseity (The self-sufficiency of God) of God, the eternal being of God.  He is the I Am.

“Throughout His preaching, teaching, healing, discipling ministry, Jesus continually declared that He is God, He is God.  He said things like, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”

“In a context of discussion about the Sabbath, He reminds them that, “The Sabbath doesn’t apply to God because God is at work all the time; and the Sabbath doesn’t really apply to Me either because I, like God, am at work all the time.”  They were infuriated that He would make such a claim.  That was in chapter 5 of John’s gospel.

“Later in chapter 8 Jesus said, “If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing.  It is My Father who glorifies Me of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’  And therefore if God, who is your God, glorifies Me as God, you ought to also glorify Me.”  And again they were offended at such perceived blasphemy.

“In chapter 10, He even said it more concisely: “I and the Father are one, one in nature and essence.”  In that same chapter, chapter 10 and verse 38, He said, “Though you do not believe Me, believe the works that you may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”

“All through His life and ministry, He claimed that He is God.  Every time Jesus said, “My Father,” which He said many, many times – every time He said, “My Father,” He was underscoring that He had the same nature as God.  And His Jewish audience did not miss the claim.  They were not at all confused.

“In fact, in chapter 5, verse 18, this is what we read: “For this cause, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”  They understood that that is exactly what He was doing, exactly.  And one of the ways that He did that was by taking to Himself the name of God “I Am” and applying it to Himself.

“There’s a series of those claims throughout the gospel of John.  He says, “I am the Bread of Life.  I am the Living Bread that came down from heaven.  I am the Light of the World.  I am the Door; I am the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd.  I am the Resurrection and the Life.  I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  And then He makes the stunning, inescapable claim, chapter 8, verse 58, “Before Abraham was born, I am eternally existing.”

“Jesus is none other than the great I Am, the eternal God in human flesh.  Is that important to believe?  Listen to this, John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”

“Can I say that another way?  If you don’t believe in the deity of the Lord Jesus, you’ll go to hell, that simple.  No matter how religious you are, how moral you are, how well your intensions might measure up with the best of humanity: if you do not believe that Jesus is God, you will go to hell.  If you believe He is a created being of any kind, no matter how noble or how elevated, you will go to hell.  You will die in your sins, which means you will die without forgiveness.  The penalty is eternal punishment.”

            Now I want to deal with the question from yesterday’s SD by looking at Psalm 80:8 “You removed a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and planted it.”  Maybe you think that this is a strange answer, but what the Psalmist is saying here is that Israel is God’s vine.  Jeremiah 2:21 says “21 “Yet I planted you a choice vine, A completely faithful seed. How then have you turned yourself before Me Into the degenerate shoots of a foreign vine?”  Now this verse shows that Israel proved to be a fruitless vine and as we studied through the Old Testament we found this to be true of Israel as the OT laments Israel’s failure to produce good fruit, and it also wars of God’s impending judgment on them.  Hosea 10:1 also laments this:  “1 Israel is a luxuriant vine; He produces fruit for himself. The more his fruit, The more altars he made; The richer his land, The better he made the sacred pillars.”  There are other passages like this but I want to quote one more from Ezekiel 15:1-8 “1 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2  "Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any wood of a branch which is among the trees of the forest? 3 “Can wood be taken from it to make anything, or can men take a peg from it on which to hang any vessel? 4 “If it has been put into the fire for fuel, and the fire has consumed both of its ends and its middle part has been charred, is it then useful for anything? 5 “Behold, while it is intact, it is not made into anything. How much less, when the fire has consumed it and it is charred, can it still be made into anything! 6 "Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, ’As the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so have I given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem; 7 and I set My face against them. Though they have come out of the fire, yet the fire will consume them. Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I set My face against them. 8 ’Thus I will make the land desolate, because they have acted unfaithfully,’" declares the Lord GOD.”

            Ok so I guess I lied and have a couple of more quotes to give you and the next is from Isaiah 5:1-7 “1 Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill. 2 He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it; Then He expected it to produce good grapes, But it produced only worthless ones. 3 “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge between Me and My vineyard. 4 “What more was there to do for My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I expected it to produce good grapes did it produce worthless ones? 5 “So now let Me tell you what I am going to do to My vineyard: I will remove its hedge and it will be consumed; I will break down its wall and it will become trampled ground. 6 “I will lay it waste; It will not be pruned or hoed, But briars and thorns will come up. I will also charge the clouds to rain no rain on it." 7 For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel And the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; For righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.”

            There is a similar story that Jesus told in the book of Matthew 21:33-43 that I will let you read for yourself, but I think you see the point in all of this that Israel was God’s vine, but failed to produce fruit and now in John 15:1 Jesus begins this lesson by saying “I am the true vine,” He is saying that I am God and I am the true vine.

            John MacArthur quotes Andreas J. Kostenbeger “Theologically, John’s point is that Jesus displaces Israel as the focus of God’s plan of salvation, with the implication that faith in Jesus becomes the decisive characteristic for membership among God’s people.”

            MacArthur adds “Alethinos (true) refers to what is real as distinct from a type (cf. Heb. 8:2; 9:24), perfect as distinct from the imperfect, or genuine rather than what is counterfeit (cf. 1 Thess. 1:9; 1 John 5:20; Rev. 3:7, 14; 6:10; 19:11).  Jesus is the true vine in the same sense that He is the true light (John 1:9), the final and complete revelation of spiritual truth, and the true bread out of heaven (John 6:32), the final and only source of spiritual sustenance.”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Now because Jesus is the true vine I can draw strength from Him through the Holy Spirit to do the things that He has planned for me to do as spoken of in Ephesians 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust that the Lord, the true Vine, will continue to teach me the things that He wants me to learn in order to bring glory to His name.

Memory verse for the week: (Romans 6:8) “8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,”

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Solomon” (1 Kings 1:32-35).

Today’s Bible question:  “Who wrote most of the Proverbs?”

Answer in our next SD.

12/12/2016 9:55 AM