Your ancestors were probably hunters. Hunters and gatherers, nomadic people forced to roam every day.[1] Many of the earliest people did not build houses because they could not afford to stay in one place. They had to be free to move with the harvests and the herds.
Farming changed all that. Someone invented plows and irrigation. Next came pruning and grafting and other techniques for making crops and fruit-bearing trees more productive. For the first time, food could be salted or pickled for preservation—and the city was born.
(There’s a non-sequitor: What did fruit-bearing trees bear? The City.)
Farming created the first food surpluses; for the first time a few members of each city could give up food-related activities and pursue other things: manufacturing, teaching, architecture, the arts, law and culture and more. Civilization owes its very existence to farming. There is a direct connection between farming and prosperity.[2]
Consequently, the Old Testament uses orchards and vineyards to symbolize productivity and riches. A man who bears fruit is productive. A nation that bears fruit is wealthy.
In Isaiah 27, God compares Israel to a vineyard and Himself to the farmer.
“Sing about My fruitful vineyard [Israel]:
I, the Lord, watch over it;
I water it continually.
I guard it day and night
so that no one may harm it.
I have no wrath.
If there were briars and thorns confronting me,
I would march against them in battle;
I would set them all on fire …
In days to come Jacob will take root,
Israel will bud and blossom
and fill all the world with fruit” Isaiah 27:2-6.
Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit, Isaiah 27:6.
Isn’t that a beautiful, rich picture? God’s people will bear fruit—and because of them, all the people of the world will eat. Can you imagine the tiny nation of Israel feeding the entire world? This passage may look to the New Jerusalem for its ultimate fulfillment, or perhaps it is fulfilled more obviously in Jesus, Israel’s Messiah. And yet, when you consider the contributions of the Jewish people in areas like law, medicine, the arts, the media, and nearly every academic field, it seems this small number of people[3] have indeed made a huge contribution to the world.
Some 700 years later Jesus borrowed the rich imagery from Isaiah 27 and employed it in a new way. No longer were God’s people instructed simply to bear fruit. Jesus told His followers to bear fruit by first remaining on the vine. Notice the way these verses echo the words of Isaiah:
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that bears fruit he prunes so that it will bear more fruit … Remain in me, as I remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” John 15:1-5.
Isaiah’s message: God will prune Israel, causing the nation to bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit, Isaiah 27:6.
Jesus’s message: God will prune even His children who are bearing fruit so they will bear more fruit. But you must abide in the Vine. Every day you must choose to walk with Jesus in true obedience. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, John 15:5.
Dear God, teach us to bear fruit. I pray every day that I would bear fruit and store up treasure in Heaven. Help me to remember that “every branch that bears fruit” You will prune. When I suffer, remind me that I am being pruned so I can bear more fruit. Thank You for the shears.
AΩ.
[1] Interestingly, the people of Israel were not hunters. The law required them to eat only kosher animals, and to be kosher meant not only to be from a kosher species but also to be killed through kosher means. Such means could not be applied to wild animals. Thus, the meat-bearing animals consumed in ancient Israel were largely domestic, not so much hunted from nature as culled from the herd.
[2] Farming made place for the urban lives so many live today, lives in which farming never enters the mind. Farming gave birth to cities whose citizens have forgotten farming.
[3] As of this writing, the worldwide population of Jewish people is estimated at almost 16 million, roughly the population of Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Istanbul, Turkey. To put it another way, Jewish people account for two tenths of one percent of the world, or two people out of every 1,000.
Household Words: 