The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 5: Why would anyone graft a wild branch on a cultivated tree?

In January, I published a note called The Trauma of Being Grafted In, For the Tree and the Branches and I have seen it reposted on different blogs so I figure I ought to post it here as well, but then I changed it and added to it.

I always preface a discussion of grafting with this, because I think it is important to establish who we are — no longer Gentiles but Israelites.

Ephesians 2:11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:

13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

16 And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:

17 And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.

18 For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

When we look at who we were and who we are called to be — we cannot overlook the realities of the grafting process. Paul used it as a picture of what happens for a reason.

Romans 11:17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;

18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.

19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in.

20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:

21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.

22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.

24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?

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Now, I have heard people say that we are grafted into the vine, Yeshua (Jesus), but Paul says that we are grafted into the olive tree of Israel, spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah.

Jer 11:16 The Lord called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken.

Grafting takes a branch of an uncultivated (wild) tree that has some favorable qualities, cuts it off from the tree it is currently a part of, strips it of its leaves, and then cuts the host tree in order to incorporate the mutilated branch. It isn’t a pleasant thing. The grafted branch has to change, and the host has to support and nourish.

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But here are some important facts about grafting — the host never changes. The cultivated tree stays exactly the same, other than being cut to accept the graft. It is the graft that changes, but the graft will never, ever make the newcomer exactly like the natural branches. The fruit won’t ever look or taste exactly the same as the fruit the host tree originally produced, but it will change. Wild fruit is generally not as abundant as cultivated, or as large. Grafting changes that — and within a few years, the grafted branch will produce fruit that is far superior in quantity to what it once produced when attached to the natural wild stock.

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Grafting is not a fast process, it takes time — in nature and in the Spirit. Grafting occurs for the express purpose of changing the branch, giving it a strong root and disease resistance — BUT no one would ever graft a wild branch onto a cultivated tree unless they wanted fruit that looked and tasted slightly different than that of the original tree!

When we, who are not natural branches (meaning that we come from stock that is hostile to cultivation, or in other words, hostile to God), are grafted into the root of Israel, our fruit and flavor will never be identical to the natural branches that are already there (those who are by birth descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). We are still going to produce olives, the same species of fruit, and far more of it than before, but we aren’t supposed to taste or look exactly the same. When someone sees our fruit they should be able to say, “Aha! Look at that grafted branch, glory to YHVH! The fruit is indeed good and abundant!”

The grafted branch has nothing to apologize about for looking and tasting different — it is the job and duty of the branch to accept nourishment from the host and to change, all the while accepting that it will never, ever be exactly like natural branches of the host tree. What the grafted branch shows us, is that YHVH purposefully ordained that the olive tree of Israel would be a veritable smorgasbord of tastes and textures and appearances. He wanted it that way. What He doesn’t want is for the olive branches to produce apples or oranges, but the fruit He has ordained.

And so what does that tell us about the character of God? Let’s go back to the Exodus out of Egypt. Now I was never taught this in Sunday School, but even the movie the Ten Commandments got this one right — not only did the sons of Israel (Jacob) come out of Egypt, but so did a “mixed multitude.” (Ex 12:38) This ‘ereb rab (and for the record ‘ereb is where the word “arab” came from, meaning a mixture) was not only Egyptians but a mixture of a great many people. It is my belief that in Egypt at that time, being THE world power because of Joseph, there were slaves and citizens from every people group on the earth. I believe that the sons of Japheth were there, alongside the sons of Shem and Ham. I believe that people of every tribe, tongue and nation were around the base of Mt Sinai, hearing the words of YHVH in the thunder and fire and smoke. I believe that those of every tribe, tongue and nation went through the red sea and were baptised into Messiah and drank water from the rock that was Messiah

I Cor 10:10 Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;

2 And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea;

3 And did all eat the same spiritual meat;

4 And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

Do you see here what Paul is saying to the Church of Corinth? Now, some assemblies were significantly Jewish communities like we find in Galatia, but in Corinth, those people were a mess, former pagan Gentiles who were having a hard time giving up their paganism and immorality. Now usually when Jews speak of “our Fathers” they are referring to the patriarchs, but here it is instead worded “all our fathers.” This was a recognition of two important truths — the first being that Paul was speaking to the “lost sheep of Israel,” those descendants of the 10 northern tribes who went into exile and became assimilated, for the most part losing their identity after having been cut off from the covenant when they rejected it through centuries of pagan idolatry in the Land. But the second truth is that Paul is also addressing those whose physical forefathers were not even at Sinai, who did not go through the Sea, and who were not under the cloud. He was calling on the precedent set by God Himself in the acceptance of the ‘ereb rab into the people of Israel at the formal founding of the Nation as it was given the covenant. As the mixed multitude were grafted fully into Israel at Sinai, becoming as the native born through faith in YHVH, becoming sons and not foreigners through faith as evidenced by obedience to the covenant, so were these wild olive branches at Corinth and in all the assemblies of the saints, grafted into Israel. Now back to Paul’s words in Ephesus — no longer strangers, no longer without hope or without God or without the Covenants, no longer foreigners — but fellow citizens of Israel. There is no longer any difference. It is important to note that at the end of their 40 years in the desert, there is no mention of any mixed multitude because it no longer existed. They were Israel.

Our children, Matthew and Andrew, were grafted into our family — they were not natural branches. Adopted children don’t look like their parents, but they are family just the same as any natural born child. There aren’t separate rules, or different expectations, and they aren’t treated differently. What is wrong or right for the natural child is also wrong or right for the adopted child. And the adopted child is probably going to look different than the others — on the outside — but their fruit will be the same. Depending on how old they were when they were adopted, they may sound different, depending on what country they came from, they may look similar or very different, but in the end you will have a family unit. That is grafting. And that is why, in Messiah there is no Jew nor Greek, Male nor Female, Slave nor Free. Yes, those external differences are still there — but Israel is Israel is Israel — one Nation under God — one family under YHVH. Even if the kids are too busy disowning each other to admit it.

Grafting is a beautiful thing. It’s a painful, time-consuming, ugly way to make a bunch of branches produce a lot of good fruit. But the result is beautiful. The result is detailed in Rev 7

9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

10 And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 4: Don’t eat that fruit yet!

What do Leviticus 19:23-25, Galatians 1:17-18, and Daniel 1:3-5, 18-20 have in common?
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Lev 19 ²³And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: THREE YEARS shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of. ²⁴But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the Lord withal. ²⁵And in the fifth year shall ye eat of the fruit thereof, that it may yield unto you the increase thereof: I am the Lord your God.

Galatians 1 ¹⁷Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. ¹⁸Then after THREE YEARS I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.

Daniel 1 ³And the king spake unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes; ⁴Children in whom was no blemish, but well favoured, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. ⁵And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s meat, and of the wine which he drank: so nourishing them THREE YEARS, that at the end thereof they might stand before the king.

Daniel 1¹⁸Now at the end of the days that the king had said he should bring them in, then the prince of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. ¹⁹And the king communed with them; and among them all was found none like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah: therefore stood they before the king. ²⁰And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.

Father had been showing me about the little fruit tree for over 2 years now, but I didn’t see the scriptural connections in my mind until last April as I started reading Daniel again, and one morning as I was painting the basement and praying, Paul’s journey to Arabia came to mind.

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Here’s the deal, and this runs absolutely counter to the practices of the modern church — new believers need YEARS to mature and grow before their fruit is going to be fit for others to benefit from and should not immediately be pressed into service wherever there is a need. In Leviticus we see the pattern beginning — the tree must be left alone, to grow, for three years — in fact, any fruit it yields is considered to be uncircumcised, not fit for human consumption! By the fourth year, the fruit is for God, presented to Him, if you will, set apart, and only in the fifth year can a man eat of it. But before that time, the ground must be prepared so that it is suitable for growth, the roots must be covered and well protected, there must be adequate nutrients, fertilizer must be applied, the bad branches must be pruned and the unruly ones tamed, suckers must be sheared away from the roots, and it must be well watered.

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Now, if I am right that this is also a picture of the believer, we will see this pattern again in scripture. So let’s look at Daniel — four young men were chosen and trained up for three years in the Babylonian language and culture — so that they could stand in the presence of the King of Babylon in the 4th year, and when the time came the King was very much impressed by their wisdom and knowledge — later in the narrative we see that the King placed them in authority over his people (Dan 2:48-9)

Let’s look also at Paul, from his testimony in his letter to the Galatians. After Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, he took a three year sabbatical in Arabia (where many believe he went to Mt Sinai). Despite being one of the most learned men on earth as far as knowledge of the scriptures, he went back to the drawing board — instead of being immediately pressed into service (although he did briefly attempt it in Damascus, as reported in Acts 9, but it would appear that after the attempt on his life he left for Arabia before heading to Jerusalem). Despite his knowledge, he was incredibly bogged down with the oral laws and traditions and teachings. He needed time, as any new believer, to detox and get back to what the scriptures actually said. All of us who have emerged from the world can relate to this! And in addition, whenever we come into a radical alteration in our beliefs, as when many of us realized that the Torah is still for followers of the Messiah, so we can walk as He walked, we need that time to unlearn and relearn.

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There is some debate as to whether or not the ministry of Messiah was three years of one year — but if it was three years then is also fits the pattern of how long a person must be discipled before being entrusted with the responsibilities of caring for people — certainly the most precious treasures YHVH possesses.

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The reason for my writing is this — the religious system shortchanged us and misrepresented the character of God, which is to care for the young as a Father, and by extension, we as older brothers and sisters must be willing to nurture the newcomers instead of using them as resources. The mature ARE the resources, not the immature. But the religious mindset has scared the beejeebies out of us and guilted the joy out of us if we don’t hit the ground running. Oddly enough, greasy grace doesn’t extend to how we treat those who have an obvious anointing on their lives. If we see that you are an evangelist — better get out there and win souls, boy! Doesn’t matter if you are still messed up — lets get them in the pews because if they die tomorrow and go to hell it will be all your fault! If we see that you are a teacher — we’ll just send you out to teach our children before you even know the basics, here’s a curriculum — even though you don’t know enough to question it or verify the contents! Pastor? Gotta get you to divinity school! Prophet? Please go away and never come back — unless you have something nice to say don’t say anything at all! Apostle? We’ll send you to Africa to plant our denominational flags so you can make them twice the sons of hell that we are.

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NO! This should not be! YHVH spoke very clearly to me about this once:

IT TAKES TIME TO LEARN!

It takes — time. And that requires patience. A believer is a precious investment, and we should treat our new brothers and sisters better than we do. We should encourage them to take some years to be still and quiet, so that when they open their mouths they don’t have to regret it in a year when they figure out that their understanding wasn’t where it needed to be. Maybe they thought they were knowledgable, and haven’t yet come to the humbling realization of how little they know. Like a baby tree, they should be propped up, and fed and watered, and pruned and protected from the elements — not forced to try to bear good fruit before their time. It is a cruel thing we do, and we do it because we have inherited lies, religious expectations instead of the compassion that comes through the Spirit. Perhaps if we had been given the opportunity to simply learn and grow and change with no other expectations foisted upon us, we wouldn’t be hazing the newcomers. But it’s time to recognize that the new lambs, and the old lambs who have come into Torah, are not yet equipped to minister and we need to stop pushing them to do it.

The Holy Spirit does not equip us immediately — there is work that must be done, or the roots will not go deep enough and that beautiful young believer will topple over by being forced to carry too much of a load. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen. And if we push someone too hard and too fast and they fall away, well shame on us. I know it was done to us, but it’s just plain hazing. Let’s try to be better spiritual parents than we were given when we came to the faith. After all, what are we saying about the character of our King when we treat saplings like mature trees? Shalom!

The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 3: Feeding the Sheep

John 21:15 So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs. He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep

I love what Yeshua said here, “Feed my sheep.” Notice what He did not say because it is just as important.

“Rule over My sheep.”

“Discourage My sheep.”

“Devour My sheep.”

“Use My sheep to build an empire.”

“Make sure My sheep aren’t asking any questions.”

or my personal favorite —

“Force-feed my sheep.”

Sometimes I wonder if He is thinking, “What part of feeding My sheep is so difficult to understand?”

The first recorded martyr was Stephen, a man full of the Spirit, and his job was….. making sure the Greek widows were taken care of. Stephen was feeding Messiah’s sheep. Now, right after Yeshua’s exchange with Peter, He plainly tells him that he will be martyred. He says, feed my sheep, and you will die for me. In Acts 6, Stephen was given the job of feeding the sheep, and then he died for the testimony of Yeshua.

What does this tell us? Because I don’t feel this was an accident, not at all, I think it is deliberate.

I believe there is a death to self that must occur in order for a person to see that the sheep are fed. I believe that those who truly embrace the job of feeding the sheep die, perhaps not at the hands of the enemy, but they do die. Who would be content to feed others year after year, never getting wealthy for it, in fact getting a lot of grief in the process? Who would not weary when the widows were never depleted, year after year. Who would be more content to feed instead of being fed? Who desires to serve instead of be served? Who desires to seek out those who need fed, instead of seeking out a reputation as someone who feeds? There is no earthly glory to be had in simply feeding people. It is not glamorous, it’s often times not pretty. Dealing with hungry sheep is laborious, and often thankless. Leading them to green pastures, and then allowing them to eat — hardly something worth bragging about.

Feeding the sheep is what Yeshua commanded Peter to do, right before He told Peter that he would one day be martyred. But what did the disciples do as soon as they found some needy people? They gave the job to others, and then one of them died the prophesied death of the feeder of hungry sheep. Of course, Stephen was meeting the needs of the Greek widows in the physical, but there is also the spiritual principle to be considered. Getting people what they need, and not simply what we want them to have, requires humility and restraint.

God’s sheep must be led towards good things, but so often I see them being directed towards the bad — in order to steer them away from it. As I was praying last night, I had to laugh at the picture that came to my mind. I saw a man feeding something poisonous to a sheep and telling them never to eat it again. And so often that is what we do, instead of feeding His sheep the good stuff and making sure they develop a healthy taste for it, we wave the bad in their faces, we sometimes even let them get a tantalizing taste for it. Oh, don’t listen to that. Stay away from that teaching. That is junk food! Perhaps. spiritually speaking, we would be better off not mentioning it unless absolutely necessary! You never know when someone might enjoy the scent of poison, and develop a hankering for it — simply because we mentioned it. Because we know our children run from everything we tell them to avoid right? Right? No, mine don’t either.

When shepherds find a poison weed in the field, they uproot it and burn it — they don’t call all the sheep over, let them get a good whiff of it and expect them not to go looking for another. It’s just such an awesome responsibility, as I said in my last blog, finding that living food and living water, and allowing the sheep to eat their fill at their own pace, and not forcing it down their throats.

Lead the sheep to a good field, and the sheep will eat. The food doesn’t need to be pre-processed, painstakingly inspected, placed into their mouths, and we don’t need to work their jaws for them and tell them to swallow and digest. Sheep know how to eat. Shepherds need to know when to leave them alone and let them do it.

The Character of God as Agriculturalist Pt 2: Keeping the Sheep

The fact that we are described as sheep, the people of His pasture, and that Yeshua (Jesus) referred to Himself as the Good Shepherd reveals a wealth of information about His character that goes well beyond the obvious. As I mentioned in my last blog post, Pruning the Branches, we need to step out of our citified point of view and into an agrarian mindset. It isn’t enough to theorize about what it means to be a sheep or a shepherd, we have to know — because our King used that real world situation to describe Himself and by extension, us.

I grew up around sheep, our property backed onto a farm so I grew up around sheep, goats, chickens, and lots and lots of apple trees from the time I was ten until I left for college. Some of the fondest memories of my life were those spent being out in the fields with the sheep. I love the way they smell, the way they sound, I love mimicking their bleats, I love the smell of alfalfa and hay. I laugh when they all face the same direction because a storm is coming, and I greatly miss the time I spent pretending like I was a farm girl instead of just a neighbor girl. But I don’t miss Baby Boy, the ram, he was nasty and hard-headed, literally.

Like my viticulture class in college, being around those sheep trained me to understand some things about Messiah’s parables, as well as many of the words of the prophets. And so sometimes, speaking about the Bible with people who don’t understand sheep can be frustrating, and even ridiculous at times.

I have been told by Pastors that sheep belong in barns (as a euphemism for churches), but sheep aren’t barn animals — they are grazing animals who spend all year outside. They have super thick, watertight wool coats that were designed to protect them from the elements. Chickens need shelter from the elements, but not sheep. Sheep weren’t designed to be confined to a building, but to live out in the world under the protection of the shepherd. As long as the sheep are where the shepherd wants them to be, they are safe.

I have been told that sheep need to be fed hay and alfalfa, provided by the shepherd — but sheep were designed to eat living food and drink living (running) water. They can eat hay and alfalfa, and they can drink from a trough, but it isn’t optimal. It is the shepherd’s job to pay attention to the conditions of the land and guide his flock to new pastures when the old has been depleted. But no shepherd would feed his flock dead food all year, and on top of that, when the shepherd leads his flock to a field they have their choice of what to eat. The shepherd does not tell the sheep which blades of grass to eat, but simply leads them to a place where they can eat what they need, keep moving, grow to maturity and be satisfied.

Shepherds, true shepherds, are mindful of their flock, they serve their flock, they put themselves in harm’s way for the sake of the flock. They fight off wolves, and lions, and thieves — never would a shepherd send out one of the sheep against such a beast. Shepherds endure cold and heat for the sake of the flock. They focus on whether the sheep have enough to eat, rather than on their own comforts. It is the shepherd’s job to promote peace within the flock, and that is done with a steady hand and a calm voice unless the situation is dire. A shepherd does not spend his time in silence, but reassuring the sheep with the sound of his voice, be it singing or speaking. The sheep know the sound of his voice and will not listen to anyone else. The sheep in modern days can even discern the sound of his individual truck! It’s true!

There is so much more I could say about sheep and the shepherd, but I want to focus on what I have shared already.

You can discern a lot about ministers by how well they represent, or misrepresent, the character of the Good Shepherd. Are they spending their time looking for good pasture where Yeshua’s flock can feed at their own pace? Or are they focusing on their own needs? Or are they trying to control the eating habits of Yeshua’s flock down to individual blades of grass, having to approve of each one personally? Is the shepherd serving the flock or is the flock serving the shepherd? Are they protecting the sheep from actual wolves or preemptively going after the sheep who are being a bit more troublesome and labeling them as wolves? Do they see the flock as Yeshua’s or their own? When blood is spilled, does it belong to the shepherd or to the flock?

Are they allowing the sheep to dine on living food and living water, or are they dishing out dead, pre-approved portions? Are they confining the sheep to a barn, and refusing to let them outside? Do they even acknowledge the sheep in other fields as sheep?

Yeshua told the story about the shepherd who left the 99 to go after the one lost lamb. I look at that and see that the Good Shepherd knows how to trust the 99 to the Father, and doesn’t have to micro-manage their spiritual lives. Good shepherds can spot the one in danger and go after them to bring them into the fold, because that lost lamb is safe with the other sheep. Good shepherds aren’t worried that the 99 will bolt while they are gone because their focus is on the lost. It is enough for a good shepherd to guide the way and allow the sheep to follow, He knows that if they are following, that it is okay if they don’t make a straight line there, as long as they end up in the right place.

So much of shepherding is simply about leaving the sheep alone if they are where they are supposed to be. It is the job of the shepherd to be on guard, to be vigilant, so that the sheep can grow and thrive, and yet calm, so they can rest. To be a shepherd is to be all about the sheep, and yet to also leave them alone, all the while watching over them. It is to know the difference between normal bleating, and fearful bleating, and pained bleating. It is about knowing the times and the seasons, and guiding the flock accordingly. It isn’t always so serious, and yet it is deadly serious.

Hired men look at the sheep and see wages — they also see dinner. A hired man is thinking about whether he could get away with picking off one of the noisier sheep and blaming it on a wolf. A hired man has his eyes on doing as little as he can, while getting paid as much as he can. A hired man isn’t going to care nearly as much if the sheep have over-eaten a field if he’s comfortable there. A hired man won’t listen with the same ear and won’t talk in the same tone — because the sheep aren’t his and don’t even belong to his master, just to his employer. And in the cold he’d be a whole lot happier keeping them in a barn eating dead food, than guiding them somewhere where they could get what they need.

Shepherding is about the sheep. And in the Kingdom, we have hired men who see God as their employer and God’s sheep as a means to an end, as well as under-shepherds who see God as their Master and who haven’t lost sight of the fact that they are still nothing but sheep themselves.

And we dare never forget that we are simply sheep.

The Character of God as Agriculturalist: Pruning the branches

YHVH describes Himself in so many ways throughout the scriptures, and many of them involve agriculture. Hebrew society was largely agrarian — even city people generally had gardens and vines and animals, and so the agricultural references in parables and allegories were able to be grasped by the children of Israel.

During the ministry of Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus), indeed in the teachings of many of the rabbis of that time period, it was a common thing to relate Kingdom principles using agricultural themes. From the beginning, we see Cain and Abel working the soil and keeping sheep, Noah was a vintner, Abraham was a shepherd (as was Isaac and the sons of Jacob, King David and the prophet Amos), Elisha worked his father’s fields until Elijah laid the mantle upon him. The Pharisees tithed their mint and cumin because they had gardens. Even King Ahab was a vine grower.

These were not, as we largely are, ignorant people when it came to the natural world. They knew the times of the harvest. They knew about the barley, the wheat, the olives that were pressed into oil, and they knew about the grape harvest. They knew that sheep and goats did not live in barns (unlike some believers I have come across). They knew about fruit trees and the importance of the early and late rains. They knew about plowing and sowing and reaping. They knew the difference between the vine, the thick woody “trunk,” and the branches, the more delicate appendages, of the grape. They knew about grafting and why it was done. They knew the difference between wheat and chaff and knew how dangerous a tare was.They had the knowledge base that too many of us guess at, with our citified assumptions, often getting it woefully wrong and therefore misinterpreting the scriptures entirely in some areas.

One of the things they knew about was the importance of the pruning process. We often think that bigger is better and that the more irons we have in the fire, the better. We look at big beautiful branches, busting with leaves and new tendrils, and we think fertility — but we would be entirely wrong. One beneficial thing I did in college for my general education requirement was taking a class in viticulture, which is a fancy latin term for the science of the production and study of grapes. Of course, I just took it for the heck of it, but it unwittingly taught me about the Bible long before I ever desired to read it.

As I mentioned before. most people think that the grape vines are the thin branches that the actual grapes grow on, largely because when people think of the word vine, things like ivy come to mind. But the vine is actually the woody trunk growing up out of the ground, which Yeshua likened to Himself. Out of that grows the branches, which He likened to ourselves. It would behoove us, therefore, to learn all about how to be fruitful branches, and what that looks like, and what must happen for a branch to bear maximum fruit — because it doesn’t happen naturally.

Left to themselves, branches will grow entirely wild. Untrained, they will fall to the ground, produce copious amounts of leaves, and produce very little fruit, and poor quality fruit at that. The branches must be lifted up, secured, and heavily pruned. A branch that spends all of it’s nutrients producing leaves and new branches will have no energy left over to produce grapes. It is the job of the vine dresser to understand what leaves and branches need to stay and which need to go, in order to provide optimal photosynthesis, and in order to direct the energy into producing fruit instead of more leaves and branches.

If I was going to compare it to something modern, I would compare it to writing a book. Have you ever read a book that could have been two chapters long but ended up as twenty? Or saw a movie that had ten minutes worth of plot strung out over three hours? Flowery language, unnecessary side trips, and oftentimes inane dialog that served no purpose other than to show off, or perhaps please a publisher who wanted a minimum number of words. More is not always better, and is often worse (I will mention Tom Bombadill here as proof). If the reader gets exasperated after page 20, then the whole purpose of the book is defeated. That’s where editors come in — getting rid of all the absurdities that do not serve the purpose of the book. It gets shortened, clarified, streamlined — it gets the point across without losing the reader in the process.

We are like those over-leafy branches and we are like those frustratingly verbose books. We need editing so that we can produce fruit. We need the unimportant and unfruitful things eliminated from our lives. We need to lose those well-intentioned time and resource eaters that are keeping us from what we are supposed to be doing and learning. We need those fleshy attitudes and wrong understandings eliminated from our characters and minds.

Interesting thing is this — we can’t see for ourselves what needs to stay and what needs to go. You notice that in John 15, it is the Father who is called the pruner of vines — and not ourselves. Imagine Him with His pruning shears on the outside, running His hand along the branch, inspecting each juncture and deciding what needs to remain and what needs to be cut away. On the other hand, we are in the dark under a wild mass of tendrils and huge green leaves — honestly, we wouldn’t even know where to begin the process. We have one job and one job only — to desire to be fruitful and to be willing to go through whatever it takes to get there. If we desire that, fruitfulness, we will yield the fate of our superfluous foliage to His best judgement. We will let Him cut off the things we don’t need, even when we want them, and we will allow things to remain, even when we don’t want them.

Pruning the branches doesn’t happen once, but year after year after year because the branches always want to grow more leaves than they need to, especially when the vine is good and the soil rich, the water and sun plentiful. We never outgrow the vine dresser, we never stop needing to be trained, secured, judged and pruned. And we will never, ever become able to dress our own vine — but if we are faithful and patient and wise, we will learn to hear the Master’s footsteps, and yield to the process.