As quite a few of you have not
been with us in the earlier gatherings of
this conference, and also because it is very
necessary that we all keep the main and
full setting of what is being said before
us, I will just take a minute or
two by way of review or retrospect.
We have been led at this time to
be occupied with the matter of the servant
and service of the Lord.
Our basic fragment is from Isaiah, Behold my
servant.
That particular phrase is of course prophetic and
relates to the Lord Jesus.
But what we have been seeing is that
he is introduced in a very full way
into the prophecies of Isaiah for a reason.
In other passages concerning the servant, Israel is
the object in view.
Israel, Jacob, my servant, that
nation was chosen and constituted and dealt with
by God with the specific object of being
his servant among the nations and to the
nations.
For servanthood, that is, that in Israel there
should be recovered and established and fulfilled the
great law of service for which the universe
was created to minister to God.
Adam profited that trust, violated that law, and
like the one who tempted and led him
so to do, appropriated everything to himself to
seek to make it minister to him.
So that, so far as God was concerned,
this law of service was turned away and
lost in the world and in the race.
God therefore intervened to take out of the
nations a people for his name, for his
name to recover this lost vocation, and
for that he chose Israel.
Then Israel failed and drew everything to itself
for its own ends and interests.
And so the law of their life, which
was laid down in Egypt, let my people
go that they may serve me, was terribly
violated and again the vocation was lost.
When that was happening, the prophet Isaiah was
raised up and the very heart of his
prophecies is centered upon this coming servant in
whom, without any fear of failure again, the
divine principle and law of service would be
perfected.
Even in our Lord Jesus, who is introduced
in a very full way in these prophecies
as the one to whom attention is drawn,
behold, my servant in whom my soul delighteth.
But that is not the end.
Then there is a third aspect, because this
servanthood is not intended to be isolated to
an individual, although that individual may be God's
own son.
The eternal thought was a people, a race
to fulfill that vocation.
When he has in preview, in forecast, accomplished
all the meaning of this service in the
person of his son, then he transfers that
to a people.
We have the third aspect of the prophecies
in the remnant.
A remnant shall retire.
And in that remnant, the Lord takes up
again the values of this servanthood and says
something that is very much akin to what
he says about the servant, my peculiar treasure.
Now, that is the Old Testament, but we
know that there's the prophetic aspect.
Even in the case of the servant, it
was future.
The Lord Jesus, who took upon him the
form of a servant, came at the time
when the nation of Israel was set aside
in that capacity, and accomplished this service himself,
and brought in a nation to take the
place of the nation that failed, a nation
who would bring forth the fruit thereof.
The church, the new holy nation, as Peter
calls it.
But before we are through the New Testament,
we find that in general, that people is
in a state of departure.
In the end, the last book in the
first chapters, we find a people of God,
but only nominally so, not actually and positively
doing the thing for which the church was
raised up.
The Lord, as we know, came back on
the old principle again, of a remnant, and
appealed to such as would have an ear
to hear, and make a response.
And before him, the embodiment of this great
service and servanthood principle and law, to minister
to him and to his satisfaction.
The Bible closes with a view of such.
His servant shall serve him.
They shall see his face.
That briefly, then, is the review of what
has been occupying us.
We have been looking into that, or shall
we say, at the great servant, with a
view to understanding more perfectly what this service
really means, the nature of it.
The law of service as universal in the
mind of God.
The nature and method of service in Christ
and in a people for his name.
Now, I think I will not go back
over all the phases and aspects of that
with which we have dealt.
We will come this morning to one more
of these, and I ask you just to
look into the prophecies of Isaiah again, laying
down our basic words in chapter 42.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my
chosen, in whom my soul delighteth, I have
put my spirit upon him.
Then will you just look back at chapter
41, verse 8.
But thou, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I
have chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend.
Now, we see in those two passages, the
model servant, and the people called to be,
the corporate expression of that servanthood.
For our purpose this morning, a particular feature
or aspect of this, I turn you back
to chapter 5 of Isaiah.
Let me sing for my well-beloved a
song of my beloved, touching his vineyard.
My well-beloved had a vineyard in a
very fruitful hill, and he made a trench
about it, and gathered out the stones thereof,
and planted it with the choicest vine, and
built a tower in the midst of it,
and also hewed out a winepress therein.
And he looked that it should bring forth
grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes.
Now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, men of Judah,
judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my
vineyard.
What could have been done more for my
vineyard, that I have not done in it?
For when I looked that it should bring
forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.
Now, go to, I will tell you what
I will do to my vineyard.
I will take away the hedge thereof, and
it shall be eaten up, and I will
break down the fence thereof, and it shall
be trodden down, and I will lay it
waste.
It shall not be pruned, nor hoed, there
shall come up briers and thorns.
I will also command the clouds that they
will rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel, and the men
of Judah his pleasant land.
And he looked for judgment, but behold oppression,
for righteousness, but behold a cry.
Among the various similes of the servant of
the Lord in these prophecies is this one
of the vine.
Israel, as the Lord's servant, is here conceived
as a vine.
And this is not an isolated passage in
that connection.
It would take too long to read or
even turn you to all of them.
The national symbol of Israel was the vine.
It was inscribed or wrought upon the very
gates of Jerusalem, of the temple.
Psalmist and psalm 80 said, Thou broughtest up
a vine out of Egypt.
Prophet Ezekiel in chapter 15 speaks about Israel
as a vine.
We know that the Lord Jesus himself on
more than one occasion and in more than
one way spoke of Israel as the vine.
And in his own matchless discourse, as probably
he led his disciples by way of the
temple, they saw the gate with the great
vine upon it.
He said, I am the true vine.
A contrasting statement.
Come back to that again.
But this and more shows us that Israel
stood to the Lord in that capacity, the
capacity of a vine.
The Lord Jesus took that up and related
it to himself to be to God, the
Father, the husband man, all that the vine
was intended to mean.
And then it is passed on to the
church.
It is passed on to the church.
I am the vine, ye are the branches.
I think our subtle mentality very often thinks
of that as two things.
But what would a bare, mere stem be?
You wouldn't call that a vine.
The vine is everything.
Stem, branches, leaves, fruit, and everything else is
one whole.
So that the very idea, conception of the
vine is transferred or carried into the church.
Ye, ye.
Well, that is, as I have said, a
conception of the servant of the Lord.
Servant of the Lord as a vine.
Whether it be Christ, whether it be Israel,
whether it be the church.
And that is what we are going to
look at more closely this morning.
First of all, we note the place that
it holds with God.
There is no mistaking the fact that the
Lord laid great store by this vine people.
I think that what he said about his
son, his beloved, in
whom he is so delighted, the committing of
himself to him is only what he, the
attitude that he wanted to take, the position
that he wanted to hold in relation to
his people.
He really wanted to be able to say
of Israel, and at one time he did,
my beloved, in whom I so delight.
It was a time when Israel was a
delight to the Lord.
At any rate, the Lord had a lot
of things like that to say about Israel.
His heart, in a word, his heart was
bound up with that people.
I will sing to my well-beloved son
of his vineyard.
It's the song or the language of endearment.
Something very precious to the Lord.
This vine servant was, as the word says,
brought up out of Egypt.
All raised up from the seed of Abraham,
my friend, was so chosen and constituted to
be for God's pleasure, for God's pleasure, in
which he should find his delight, in which
he could take pleasure, and for God's satisfaction,
he should find in it the answer to
something that he longed for and desired.
And still more, he should find by it
his glory.
It should be to his glory, just as
any exemplary vine would be, the real satisfaction
and pleasure and glory of the vine dresser,
or of the owner of the vine.
That is the position that the vine holds
with God.
Something very precious to him, and very important
to him, related to nothing less than his
own glory, that in it and by it,
his glory should be displayed.
He should find his glory.
Well, that, of course, embraces a great deal
of scripture.
God's thoughts about his people.
This is the very first meaning of servanthood,
of ministering to the Lord.
It is to minister to his pleasure, to
his satisfaction, and to his glory, to exist
for that and for no other purpose.
What God has in it, that is ministering.
What God is to get through it, that
is service.
And this all means that it has no
other purpose in its existence.
And it leads us to that as the
second thing.
Firstly, what it is to God, place that
it holds to him, but then the place
that it holds as to itself.
This, this is no casual illustration or symbolism.
God is never casual in the choice of
his objects, of teaching.
He knows what he's doing.
And when he made the vine the symbol
of ministry to himself and of real service
to him, he knew exactly why he did
so.
Because, you see, the vine is exclusively, exclusively
for fruitfulness.
That is a thing that the prophet Ezekiel
points out to the men around him.
You look at his prophecies in chapter 15,
the thing that he is saying to them
is this, there is no other use that
you can make of a vine but its
fruit.
He even said this, can you even take
of the stem of the vine and make
a peg to hang anything on?
You don't even do that.
Someone has said you don't even make a
washing pin or hook out of a vine.
Can't make anything of it.
It is useless for all other or any
other purpose than fruit.
I say again, God knew what he meant
when he took the vine as the symbol
of the servant people.
And if that needs any kind of emphasis,
underlining, you've only got to look at the
servant.
The servant who said I am the vine.
Did he have any alternatives, any diversions, any
secondary interests or uses?
No.
He had so many things to which he
could turn if one failed.
He hadn't diversions in his life.
He had nothing, nothing but this fruit bearing
for the pleasure, satisfaction and glory of his
father.
Exclusively bound to that one thing.
That is the vine.
All its energies and all its interests are
concentrated upon one thing.
That is the Lord having what he wants.
That upon which his heart is set.
The Lord having his inheritance.
The Lord having his rights.
His rights.
And all service that is really service to
God is concentrated in that one thing.
The Lord having his rights.
Well we just say a word about those
rights of God.
Have you quite, have you grasped this exclusiveness
of purpose in existence?
Have you got any alternatives?
Have you got a second line of life?
Have you got diversions?
Is your life, though it has to be
spread over many things, you have your home
to look after, you have your business to
go to and attend to?
There are obligations in this world nevertheless.
Have you got one motive in living, in
doing all, whether it's home or business or
anything else?
One governing motive that gathers up everything and
concentrates everything.
The Lord having his rights.
The Lord finding his pleasure, satisfaction and glory.
That is consecration.
That is ministering to the Lord.
That is the service of the Lord.
The service of the Lord has come to
mean such a lot that very often is
not the true principle of service.
We talk about being servants of the Lord
or going into the Lord's work or service.
We've got specific ideas, particular ideas about that.
Well it may express itself in various and
in many ways.
But mark you, dear friends, the servant of
the Lord is not some peculiar person wearing
a certain kind of garb and going by
a certain kind of title.
The servant of the Lord is any man,
any woman put in any place who is
there seeing to it that God gets what
he can have there.
And they're concentrated upon that.
And you can be as much a servant
of the Lord in your business, in your
hospital, in your school, in your home as
any man who ever stands behind this desk
and preaches the word.
Just as truly it is the principle and
motive and law of service that makes the
servant, not the profession or anything else.
The law of service is God has got
to have everything wherever I am.
So let this thought and truth transfigure everything
for you.
You've got some difficult places to be in.
Places that you would not choose if you
had your way.
Places to which you've got to go.
But take this with you.
I'm going to be there.
I'm going to be here as the servant
of the Lord.
Men may think that I am or call
me their servant.
But I'm here as the servant of the
Lord, whatever it is.
And I have said that it is gathered
up into this one idea that God has
his rights.
The rights of God are found in the
fruit.
What are the rights of God?
What is the fruit that is to come
to him?
Well, first of all, of course it has
to do and must have to do with
God's nature, finding its satisfaction.
God has a peculiar constitutional liking for grapes.
It's only a way of saying something.
His nature just delights in death.
You know what I mean?
We all have particular fancies, haven't we?
Our natures go out for certain things.
That's a thing that we like, something in
our constitution that just responds to that.
We find that our very being gets a
certain satisfaction, pleasure, gratification in certain things.
Well, that's how it is with God in
this matter.
His nature is to be satisfied by this
fruit.
But what is God's nature?
What is God's nature?
Well, Paul gives us the answer in his
Galatian letter.
Now the fruit of the Spirit is love.
God is love.
And do you want to know what that
is?
Because the grammatical form demands that we put
it like this.
It does not say now the fruits of
the Spirit are, and then the whole range
of things.
It says just one, the fruit of the
Spirit is love.
What is that?
Joy, long-suffering, meekness, goodness, self-control.
That's love.
Along its various lines.
But all those are aspects of the one
thing, the nature of God.
The love of God shed abroad in our
hearts is the secret of joy.
It's the secret of joy.
And it is the secret of long-suffering,
that is, patience.
It's the secret of everything else.
But all these things are expressive of the
nature of God, and Paul says the fruit
of the Spirit.
And it is the secret of long-suffering,
that is, patience.
It's the secret of everything else.
But all these things are expressive of the
nature of God, and Paul says the fruit
of the Spirit is found in these things
as manifestations of the one nature of God,
love.
He does look for that fruit.
That fruit is God's right.
His nature demands that.
His whole, may I say, constitution must have
that for its satisfaction.
It begins there in character, in nature, in
the work of the Spirit in us, in
the work of grace in us.
That is firstly the fruit to which God
has a right.
And it's inward, it's like that.
The servant is essentially such a servant, whether
it be the individual, or whether it be
the church, or whether it be that which
represents the church in the inner company.
The very service is in the first place
the service of satisfying God as to his
own nature.
It is tragically and grievously true that so
many find it possible to be in Christian
work who are themselves a contradiction to the
nature of God, persistently, persistently, habitually.
And if there's one thing that the Bible
thunders against, it is that that is one
of the great consummate factors at the end
of the Bible, those messages to the churches
thunder out on this, this thing.
But there is that which is a contradiction
to the nature of God.
And how strong, how almost fierce is the
voice of the Spirit where that is true.
I have this against thee.
Thou hast there that woman, Jessica, them that
teach the doctrine of Balaam, which thing I
hate.
Well, so contrary to the nature of God.
And if we were to sum up the
challenge to those churches, and to the church,
and to ourselves, in a word we would
say, when it's like that God is not
getting his rights, he's not being ministered to
in his very nature, the demands of his
nature.
The beginning then of servanthood or ministry to
the Lord is here in our character, in
our character, in our answering to the nature
of God, the Lord help us.
But then when that is recognized, we've adjusted
to that, this, these rights of God and
this fruit for God is the satisfaction of
God's position in this universe, in this world,
in the nation.
God's position.
See that was the whole charge laid against
Israel, but we are not going to take
that up now because it comes later.
But God had been deposed from his right
position.
The Lord, the Lord was the only true
and rightful Lord of this whole creation and
of this people and of the nation.
Here, O Israel, the Lord thy God is
one God, is one God.
He's lost that place, not only in the
nation, but in his people.
They were raised up particularly to bring God
into his place in the nation as the
only God, the true God.
His rights in creation, his rights in himself
as the Lord were that he and he
only should be served.
Thou shalt love the Lord with all thine
heart, with all thy soul, with all thy
mind, with all thy strength, and him only
shall the rights of God to exclusive and
utter dominion, lordship, govern, center his
rights.
And that is the nature of servanthood.
Is it not clear in the case of
the great servant, the Lord Jesus, what was
he here for?
Well, you may say he was here for
this and for that, and there are many
things which define his mission, but you put
them all together, you put them all together,
and they all meant one thing, God has
got to have his rights.
Rights in creation, rights in redemption, rights in
dominion, rights in worship and in service.
The great servant was committed and abandoned to
that.
That is service, dear friends, that after having
faced this question of satisfying God's nature, we
are here, the church is here, or any
company of the church is here on this
earth for this purpose, to see to it
that God has his place, which is utter.
God is supreme.
There is no dividing of allegiance with God.
God must have the fruit out of the
nations and in the nations, and that's what
the church is here for.
We are here to be in the nations.
Church is here to be in the nations
that God should have his place in the
nations.
Whatever challenge there may come to the presence
of any people of God in any place,
it is not how far they are successful
in their service, it is a matter of
their standing with both feet there and saying,
here I am, I'm here for God, and
my being here is a testimony to the
fact that God has supreme rights in this
place.
I believe that that is exactly what the
Lord Jesus meant when he said, this gospel
of the kingdom, the rule of God must
be preached as a witness in every nation.
He did not say, this gospel of the
kingdom must be preached and all the nations
must be saved and everybody in the nations
before the coming could take place.
He said, for a witness.
A witness.
There must be that in the nations which
by its very presence witnesses to the fact
that there's a break in the dominion of
Satan.
It's not universal.
We're here for that, dear friends.
Where we are, there should be a testimony
of the fact that Satan is not absolute,
Lord.
Kingdom of Satan is not absolutely universal.
Here's a break in it, and I am
the break.
My testimony.
That's why you're there, anywhere.
I say again, it may not be that
you'll have a lot of souls saved, or
see a great deal of the result of
your being there, but you're there.
That's the fact.
God very often puts people just there.
He doesn't explain along the lines of any
proofs and evidences and pleasure and satisfaction, why
they're there, but they're there, and that's all
he wants, very often.
Have us there, as a witness.
That's ministry.
Very difficult ministry sometimes.
He's pointed out yesterday, Isaiah was there, but
the reactions to his presence were very painful
for him.
There were no signs of any success of
his ministry while he was giving it.
Jeremiah was there, but he was there.
The Lord had his men, and that's what
mattered.
Not the success of their ministry, but the
fact that they represented God's rights in the
earth.
And then, of course, God's rights are ultimately
his fullness, his fullness, that he shall be
filled with all things.
And this is no contradiction of what I
just said, not taking from it.
It may just be that, but nevertheless, nevertheless,
this ministry, this service, is related to things
coming back to the Lord.
What we have before called a return movement
to God.
For that is everything taking place.
You see, in the beginning, everything was in
God.
And then things were taken out of God,
taken away from God, diverted from God, and
sent out in other directions for other ends,
taken away from God.
And this mighty movement of God through history
has been to turn things back to himself.
A great return movement into God, so that
at last, at last, as it is foreshown,
he shall fill all things, and all things
shall fill him.
All things shall be summed up in him.
He will be the sum of all things,
when this great return movement has fulfilled itself.
Now, that is just the meaning of worship
that so many of you know.
And we are here for that purpose, to
bring everything back to God, to counter that
reverse, to break that course of things away
from God.
Oh, see how it's all being taken away
from God.
That is the very principle of this world.
Take everything for itself.
Church is here to bring everything back to
him.
When we speak about Christ filling all things,
or the fullness of Christ, that is what
we mean.
It's his inheritance in the same, that he
shall be the fullness of all things, turning
things back to God.
Well, are you in that ministry?
Are we in that servanthood?
We here in this life and on this
earth, for this one thing, God's going to
have everything.
It's going to be pulled back to him.
We are going to stand right like a
rock in this drift and this current that
rushes away from God and turn it round
and swing it back to him.
Challenge this thing.
That's what the prophets did.
That's what the Lord Jesus did, the great
servant.
That is what the church is for.
But isn't it sad, isn't it sad that
the very church itself has become to some
degree, not a small degree, that which has
appropriated to itself for its own end and
pleasure much that belongs to God.
Yes, how many there are in the church
and in what is called Christian work who
are in it for their own satisfaction, for
their own reputation, to make a name.
And if you interfere with them and their
bit of work, you get into trouble.
It's themselves after all in the work.
Oh no, we are here not for ourselves.
We're here for God.
Now I must hurry to the conclusion for
this morning.
And the third thing, as to the vine,
we're keeping that of course well in the
background of our mental conception picture.
The third thing is the discipline essential to
this purpose.
So much is said about this in relation
to the vine, isn't it?
The Lord himself spoke about it, every branch
in me that beareth fruit, he parteth it
that it may bear more fruit.
We write from Isaiah, what more could be
done to my vine than I have done.
A lot of history gathered into that where
Israel is concerned, a tremendous amount of history,
the history of discipline in that nation.
What care God had taken, what application, what
devotion, what labor, what pains over that vine.
And the history of that people was not
always a comfortable history under the hand of
God.
The Lord didn't protect, safeguard, and so
prevent difficulties arising and adversities.
No, there's a lot crowded into the word
discipline or purging, pruning if you like.
Watch him, watch him, watch the husband man.
What is he doing?
Well, he's cutting away a lot.
That is, he is reducing things quite a
bit.
He is limiting certain liberties, limiting
certain liberties.
He's taking away some liberties.
There are liberties, you know, which are inimical
to value.
We rejoice in our liberty in Christ, but
I'm afraid a lot of people misunderstood that
liberty in Christ.
Years ago, I used to have a good
deal of association with what is called modernists,
the liberal school of theology.
I knew them personally, many of them, and
I found amongst them a real gloating over
their position.
Oh, what a great thing it is to
be emancipated from that conservative, narrow school of
biblical interpretation.
We no longer are bound by those old
-fashioned ideas of the inspiration of the scripture
and the deity of Christ and these things.
We have escaped from those limitations.
We rejoice in our liberty.
My question is the ultimate one.
How much fruit for God has come along
that line?
How much satisfaction to God has that produced?
The liberty of its kind, which is not
fruitful in this way in which we are
speaking, God having his rights, nay, to the
contrary.
The kind of liberty, although it is not
the liberty of Christ.
I remember not so long ago going to
Denmark, finding they were in the vortex of
a great difficulty.
A whole group of their once most promising
young men had misinterpreted or
misapprehended the teaching of Galatians about liberty in
Christ and thrown out all restraint.
We in Christ are free from all law.
We are free from the law.
Therefore, there is no law against our smoking.
We can smoke.
There is no law against our going to
the theater.
We can go.
We are free in Christ.
Thrown out of all those restraints on this
misinterpretation of liberty.
It was disastrous to the spiritual life.
Very glad to say that that battle was
fought through and cleared up and that's all
right now and they're all in the right
time of liberty, which, of course, means the
restriction of certain things.
The difference, as we so often say, between
liberty and license is another form of liberty,
which equally is not a fruitful liberty.
You know, the Roman church has a liberty.
Oh, it's this liberty of taking away your
own conscience and making the church and the
priest your conscience.
I need not have any conscience about things
at all.
My priest will look after that for me.
My church will look after that for me.
And so very often you find a terrible
contradiction in that system.
Terrible contradiction where suddenly things are not to
the satisfaction of God.
But how they glory in that kind of
liberty, don't they?
Oh, how good it is to be free
from what they mean is conscience.
They call it law.
They call it narrowness, but what they mean
is conscience about this and that.
You're free.
That's taken over by a system.
It doesn't always work out very fruitfully.
You get that sort of thing in the
army.
When a man goes into the army, the
government and the army take over all responsibility
for him.
He has no longer any personal responsibilities except
to do from day to day what he's
told.
Everything else taken over for him and he
doesn't worry a bit.
He doesn't worry whether his family is looked
after or anything like that.
It's all taken off of him.
Beautiful liberty, but what about character?
What about character?
What about the building up of personal responsibility?
That doesn't come into it.
It's a liberty that is inimical to real
values.
And when those men come out of the
army, if they've been in long enough, they
don't know what to do.
Now they've got to take the whole thing
on their own shoulders and they're not fit
for it.
They have become unqualified to face life for
themselves and many of them want to get
back into the army again simply because of
this matter of responsibility.
You see what I mean?
Well, there's a discipline about fruitfulness that is
absolutely essential and that discipline is sometimes the
removal of certain liberties, the cutting down, if
you like, a certain kind of narrowing.
God forbid that we should be narrow.
I don't see how anybody can be narrow
and have a right conception of the eternal,
universal, vast realities of Christ and his Church.
It can't be narrow when you've got real
apprehension of these vast things into which we
are called.
The greatness of Christ, the greatness of the
Church, that's not narrow.
But there is in this the necessity for
shutting us up to the things which matter
most and they are fruit, fruit, fruit for
God.
So we find in this process of discipline
there is with the Lord an intensification.
That's it.
He purges it, not that which is bearing
no fruit, for God's bare fruit.
Yes, there's fruit.
It isn't that there is no fruit at
all, but that there is fruit is not
always what he is most set upon.
It is not bulk, it is not measure,
it is quality, it is weight that matters
with God.
It is what is intrinsic value.
So when there is fruit he purges that
it may bear more fruit, that is less
for better.
Very often, less for better.
Not spread over too wide an area in
order to get something more concentric or more
intensive, more rich, more full, more intensive.
That is a principle with God in his
dealings with the vine.
Then there is no figure, I think, that
sets forth the principle of the corporate better
and more than the vine.
Here indeed, and the suggestion is ludicrous, here
indeed one grape cannot exist by itself.
Well, go into a vinery, and what would
you say if you saw up there one
grape, and over there another grape, and over
there one more grape?
You would say, well, there's something gone wrong
here.
This is either subnormal or abnormal.
This is not the normal life.
What is the normal life?
A bunch of grapes.
A bunch of grapes, closely in touch, in
contact, related to each other.
It is a corporate life, isn't it?
And I say again, I think there is
no figure that better and more fully sets
forth this corporate principle of service.
Really, really, God gets most of his satisfaction
through the relatedness of his church and service.
You try to be an individual grape, well,
you may be.
You may be a grape, and you might
even be a very large one, and there's
something abnormal about that.
It's not natural.
It's not right.
The Lord gets far more by fellowship, by
relatedness, by oneness, by being together, far more.
He's laid down that principle.
Two or three, you see, the corporate principle,
that's his line.
He's always worked on that.
And get scattered, get divided, and there's something
lost, something lost.
This very service, dear friends, to God requires
that we are closely together.
We're really bound together.
That we are, in a sense, one fruit.
One bunch.
I just say that because it's a very
important thing to notice.
And finally, the intrinsic element of this symbol,
the vine, surely is life.
It is life, isn't it?
We know how, in the word, word, the
fruit of the vine, fruit of the vine,
is the symbol of the blood of Christ,
the very blood of Christ.
As he takes the cup and the wine,
he says, this is my blood, my blood
shed for you.
Two things go together, fruit of the vine
and the blood in symbolism.
And what is the blood but the life,
the very life.
So that the intrinsic element and factor in
the fruit is that it ministers life.
Life is being ministered.
There's a virtue.
There's an energy.
It is that of life.
I think everything has got to be tested
by that, don't you?
Because that's the ultimate thing.
So what is ministry?
What is fruitfulness?
What is service and servanthood?
Well, it resolves itself into this at the
end.
How much life you're ministering.
How much life others are coming into and
deriving by your being there where you are.
Not how much truth, not even how much
light, but how much life when they come.
One thing that they do sense, whether they
understand everything or not, is life.
Life, there's life.
That's the fruit.
That's the real meaning of the vine.
But mark you, mark you, the fruit of
the vine, the wine comes out of the
wine press, the wine press, perhaps you know
what that means.
Yes, the derived values of this service come
out of suffering, out of pressure, out of
grinding and crushing and breaking and squeezing.
We know what that means to some extent
in spiritual terms like that.
But remember that it's, that is the way
of being able to give, to give.
This is fruit for giving, not for keeping,
for holding.
It's for giving, to be able to give.
That's service, to have something to give for
the life of others.
That is servanthood.
Well, so much then the Lord write it
deep in our hearts.
He brought a vine out of Egypt.
I am the vine, you're the branches.