Key Verse: “I am the vine; you
are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in Him, he will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5
In the wilderness, the people
were slow to understand how important it is to be in the Lord’s Will and how
necessary it is to set aside our own. God had blessed and approved the plan to
send out spies from the Children of Israel into enemy territory. God watched
over those who were spies. He blessed and protected them and allowed them to
bring back proof of the goodness of the land.
However, ten of those men did not
recognize the Lord’s blessing of protection. Instead of proclaiming the
goodness of the Lord, they talked about the inability of man to conquer the
good land that the Lord was promising to them. Rather than trust the words of
Joshua and Caleb, the people saw their own frailty and listened to the doubters.
This became a pivotal event in
the history of Israel. This is the event that caused the Lord to finally turn
His back on that generation and wait for the next generation to take its place.
The people saw their mistake too late, but did not realize that God’s blessing
had left them. They thought that they could go ahead anyway and take on their
enemy without God’s help. They learned the hard way how much they needed to
abide in Him to be able to do anything for His purpose.
Instead of coming into the
Promised Land within a few short years of leaving Egypt, they were destined to
wander for forty years while God waited for the older generation to be
replaced. He kept them safe and provided for their comfort, but He withheld His
strength. Apart from Him, they could do nothing. Their children needed to see
this important lesson lived out.
We are no different. How often do
we pray for the Lord to bless what we are doing rather than listen to Him and
ask to be involved with what He is blessing? Like the children of Israel, we
get a bright idea and forge ahead assuming that the Lord will bless it because
we are doing it for Him! At those times, we need to be careful because we may
be behaving like the Israelites who just knew that the Lord approved of their
actions without checking with Him first.
Jesus paints an intimate picture
here of Him as a grape vine with us as branches. Again, the necessity of
closeness to Him is emphasized. He is the vine and His Father is the vine
dresser. A branch needs to stay connected to its root. That is the only way
that it will receive nourishment. It can produce fruit only by receiving the
nourishment the root provides. It can’t produce a different kind of fruit or
even a different breed of grape and it can do nothing but die if it is removed
from the vine altogether. “Remain in Me and I will remain in you.” (John 15:4) Jesus
does not reject us. He longs to remain attached to us. However, we often choose
to run off and do our own thing, or ignore Him. When we do this, we risk
becoming unfruitful altogether. We risk having the Father remove us from His
vine.
This last color for our "I
Am" portrait of Christ, we should make purple. Purple is the color of
grapes, but also the color of royalty. Our vine is our King and we are royal
purple because of Him. The blood of His grapes was shed for us, spilling onto
our pallor making us part of His royal Kingdom as a result. “As the Father has
loved Me, so have I loved you. Now remain in My love.” (John 15:9) God can be
the great “I Am,” to us only as we stay close to Him to receive all that, “I
Am,” is.
Hymn: “Leaning On the Everlasting
Arms”
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