How often have you returned from a trip to the plant nursery, newly purchased shrub, tree or seedlings in hand, and simply stuck them into the soil, hoping for the best? I think, with a few exceptions, this describes most of us in our gardening efforts!
Yet there are some, those true gardeners, who have a deep passion for their plants and gardens. They look at the available space, the soil type and the climate and carefully select just the right plant. Then they critically shop for healthy specimens, clear out the weeds and prepare the soil. After much painstaking work, the plant is lovingly eased out of its temporary container and settled gently into its new home.
But even then, the true gardener never ceases in his ministrations to the plant. He feeds it and waters it regularly, removes weeds that have sprung up, prunes it and shelters it from extreme weather.
God is this type of gardener. In Psalm 80, the exodus is stylistically re-told using the metaphor of God as the gardener and the nation of Israel as the vine.
” You transplanted a vine from Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it,
and it took root and filled the land.”
But God’s role as gardener didn’t begin at the time of Exodus. Long before that He chose Abraham and slowly grew the vine of Israel from this one seed (Gen 12). When the seedling started to show some healthy growth, He planted it temporarily in Egypt (Gen 46). Gardeners typically raise seeds indoors or in a sheltered spot before they plant them in their destined location. Then they gradually expose them to the outdoors environment for a “hardening off” period. Finally, only once they are confident the seedlings are strong enough to survive do they plant them in their true soil.
It seems to me as if God did the same sort of thing with Israel. He moved them into Egypt, to the fertile land of Goshen, at a time when there was a severe famine in the land. They were cared for by Joseph, but later things became hard and they were subjected to slavery.
Throughout this period, God was preparing the soil and finally, after many generations, the conditions were auspicious and the Good Gardener uprooted His cherished vine from its temporary location to the land He had prepared for it. In Gen 15:13-16, God foretold these events in a dream to Abraham: ” “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
While Psalm 80 uses the gardening metaphor to illustrate the Exodus of the Israelites, we know that as Christians, each one of us experiences and re-enacts a kind of “personal Exodus” when we place our faith in Jesus. Through Him, we are taken out of slavery and into the promised land, the Kingdom of God. but like the Israelites, our journey is not an easy one. Indeed, it is fraught will difficulty and suffering, prompting the apostle Peter to write “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13 NIV).
When I reflect on the gardening metaphor of Psalm 80, it gives me great comfort, for it tells me that I also am a vine. Chosen long ago. Planted and cared for by God. It tells me that He has planted me in good soil that He has prepared for me in advance. It also tells me that some of the pain and suffering, at least, is merely part of His hardening off process, to prepare me for my final destination. Jesus is even now preparing the place for my final destination: “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am“. (John 14:2-3 NIV)
In John 15 verses 1 to 2, Jesus makes this remarkable statement: ““I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” Here, then, Jesus is using the same imagery as in Psalm 80 to describe God the Father.
In his book The message of John, Bruce Milne writes: “The vine is an essentially utilitarian plan; It exists to bear fruit. ” (p 219-220) Similarly, we are to bear fruit when we belong to Jesus. Consider the following passage from Romans 7:4; “So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.”
Paul elaborates the gardening metaphor even further in Romans eleven, he equates the Gentiles to a wild olive shoot that has been grafted into the olive tree of Israel, so that we may also “share in the nourishing sap of the olive root“.
How apt this illustration of ingrafting to the Christian faith! In order to graft a branch into the tree, the tree must be cut deeply. Similarly, only through the wounds of Christ can we enter into union with Him; “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” ” (1 Peter 2:24 NIV). And for us to be grafted in, we also must be cut away entirely from our parent tree, in like manner we must die to the world and our sinful natures and become one with Christ; “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matt 16:25 NIV). “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (Rom 8:13 NIV)
Imagine we are all branches growing on a tree whose root has been fatally poisoned. We all know the root will finally wither and perish, taking us all with it. Indeed, the evidence of decay is already manifesting in our own sap; Our leaves are yellowing and we ourselves are drooping to the ground, poisoned by the very root that should feed us.
Suddenly, we become aware of a healthy tree not far away. “Oh”, we wonder, “how miraculous if we could somehow be cut from this root of poison and grafted into the healthy tree! How wonderful it would be to be clothed again with green leaves instead of this paltry, yellowing, insufficient covering we now have! How glorious it would be to bear good, healthy fruit once more. To fulfill our true nature as branches!”
But all our dreams would be in vain, for the space between the trees might as well be as if “a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us” as in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:26 NIV). It is not given to mere branches such as we are to cross a space such as this.
But even besides our inability to cross this space, we are irrevocably rooted here in this dying tree. How can we ever wrench ourselves free even if we could cross over? Surely a branch that is wrenched from its root will die!
But let’s say we somehow manage the impossible. Suppose we tear ourselves forcefully from our own tree and cross this immense gulf, how do we become part of the healthy tree? Someone needs to graft us in before that healing sap could flow through us and sustain us! Who would possibly do that?
Psalm 80 gives us the answer:
“Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand,
the son of man you have raised up for yourself.”
Then we will not turn away from you;
revive us, and we will call on your name.”
Jesus is the Son of Man. In the Gospel of John, after Jesus healed the blind man in John 8-9, the formerly blind man was thrown out of the synagogue. When Jesus heard this, he found him again and said: ““Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.” (John 9:35-37 NIV).
Only through the Son of Man can we be revived again. If we put our faith in Him, we will partake of His everlasting life.
When I originally read Psalm 80, it seemed to me to be all about restoring those who have fallen away from their faith. I myself, after becoming a Christian, experienced a period of falling away, or “backsliding” as we called it in those days.
To those who are back-slid or back-sliding, this Psalm is a great comfort. The psalmist acknowledges the estrangement and consequent results between them and God. But yet he is full of hope of restoration, not a restoration earned through our own efforts, but an expectation of the grace and initiative of God;
“Restore us, Lord God Almighty;
make your face shine on us,
that we may be saved.”
(Psalm 80:3, 7 and 19 NIV)
Just like the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32 NIV), no matter how far we have wandered, we can return at any time to find God welcoming us with open arms! As Jesus says in John 6:37; ” All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.“
God is the gardener. We are branches miraculously grafted into Jesus, the true vine. Through participation in His nature, we bear fruit for God. This metaphor seems so powerful, and once you start looking you’ll find it reflected everywhere in the Bible.
May this prayer, prayed by Paul for the Colossians be fulfilled in your lives also:
“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God…”
Delight in the Lord 