The Vine and its Branches' 2
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Now, these branches that bear no fruit "the gardener takes away;" that is, he removes them from the place which they were occupying. And how does he remove them? Why, some he removes by the sudden stroke of death; when the time of vengeance is come, when they have "filled up the measure of their iniquities," the Lord removes them by cutting them down at a stroke. And this has often been the case with persecutors and oppressors of God's truth. Some have put an end to their own lives by the halter, the razor, or the pond; others have been cut down by raging fevers; others have ended their days in a madhouse; and others have been so manifestly pointed out by the arrows of God sticking in them as the enemies of his truth, that their death has even been horrible to those who have no religion to know what the deathbed of a saint is. Thus the Lord "takes them away," by some putting forth of the hand of his vengeance against them.
With others the Lord deals in a different way. As I was speaking last Lord's day, he "dries up the green tree;" the branch becomes withered. There never was any spiritual sap in it; but even natural zeal dries up, and all fervor is lost. Thus the branch becomes withered and dead, and it drops off; that is, it no longer keeps its nominal place in the vine, it no longer maintains even an outward profession, but it drops off as a rotten branch. You that have experience of being in churches, have you not seen this take place in yours? Cannot you at this moment call to mind such and such a member, who once flourished in zeal, with great gifts in prayer, and was forward on every occasion to speak his mind; and has he not dropped off? If you have watched him, he has dropped perhaps into Arminianism, into Socinianism, into Infidelity, or dropped into open sin, and either taken himself away from you, or you have been forced to separate him on account of his bad conduct. Well, then, the branch is "taken away."
And the gardener, the Father, takes others away by ceasing to restrain them from the lusts of their hearts by providential barriers, by giving them over to a reprobate mind, so that they commit all uncleanness with greediness; and then in a fit of passionate disgust they throw aside all religion. The deep backwater of sin in their heart bursts through the flood-gates, which hitherto have pent it back; and they rush headlong into the pleasures of the world and the lusts of the flesh. Satan finds the chambers of the palace "swept and garnished;" and "he takes seven devils, and enters in, and dwells there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first." And thus in way of judgment the Father "takes them away."
But some may go on even to a deathbed; aye, and be thought highly of in a church; yes, and be received as gracious men and women, and go on flattering themselves they are the children of God, building upon vain props, resting upon rotten confidences, and when they come to die, the Lord takes the veil off his angry countenance, and frowns them into a never-ending perdition.
Or, more than that; the Lord may "take them away" at the very moment that the soul leaves the body; that they may seem to die in peace, and the Lord reserves his "taking them away" until that moment, when the soul leaves its earthly tabernacle, and it is cast into the place where hope never comes.
These, then, are the branches, in the vine nominally, whom the gardener "takes away."
We come now to the branches, whom the Father "prunes, that they may bring forth more fruit." These living branches, then, that bear true fruit, are apt to become weak and sickly, and thus need the cleansing hand of the gardener. The word "purge" signifies to purify or cleanse. And there are various ways of cleansing or purifying the vine.
Sometimes the branch gets encrusted with moss, and what are called lichens. It gets run over with these adventitious foreign encumbrances, which seem, by preventing the sap having free course, and excluding the influence of the atmosphere, to make the branch sickly and diseased. How covetousness and worldliness and the cares of this life and anxiety after the poor perishing things of time and sense, how this moss creeps round a man's heart! and as it creeps round his heart, how it binds it and contracts it! The Apostle truly said, "The love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
We might expect that when the Lord blessed a man with prosperity, it would open his heart; but do we see it so? No, almost always it contracts his heart. When this moss gets round him, it seems to bind the bark; and as it nips and contracts the bark, the sap seems to be stopped in its circulation, so as not to flow into it, to make it "fruitful in every good word and work." Now, the Lord sees that some of his people are getting this moss round them; they do not bear fruit; the branches are becoming sickly; they look withered and shrunken. The gardener watches this, for he wants to see how his vine is going on; "the beloved comes into his garden to eat his pleasant fruits." And he stretches forth his hand, and takes the moss away. There is no other remedy. It was binding the bark, and stopping the vital juice. He takes away, then, the property; removes the worldly prosperity; mars the man's prospects in life; and thus removes that which was prejudicial.
Sometimes, if we look at a branch, we shall see one part of it beginning to swell; a knot is forming there; and, as it swells, and a knot forms, that also stops the circulation of the sap, and makes the branch sickly and the fruit to wither. Now, here is pride in a man's heart, which makes it swell with ambition and presumption and self-exaltation and a desire to be something. And when this pride begins to rise and swell, it not only swells outwardly, but it swells inwardly; and as it swells inwardly, of course there is less passage for the sap to flow. Pride is not merely such as may be visible in a man's outward gesture and demeanor; it is inward, and when it is in a man's heart, it contracts it, and it seems to stop the circulation of living sap in his soul.
And what is the cure for that? Why, the knife must come to prune down this knot – to remove this swelling. Are you gifted in prayer? The knife must come, and cut your pretty gift. Have you a good memory of the Scriptures? You must find your recollection of texts and passages fail? Have you a good judgment of the doctrines of grace? You must come to the spot of Ephraim, and "be broken in judgment." Are you in any way secretly exalting yourself among the people of God? You must have the knife of piercing convictions passed through this pride of yours, so as to go right through it inwardly, as well as pare it and clip it outwardly, and cut you down to your right measure. And thus there is a purging of the branch, "that it may bring forth more fruit."
The branch sometimes gets too luxuriant; all its strength goes into leaves and shoots, and the juice is not so condensed as to produce fruit. Then the gardener must take out the pruning knife, and cut the ends of the branches off. Oh! to have the pruning knife, friends! to have our religion, or what we thought to be religion, pruned and cut down to a stump; to have all that we thought in ourselves was of God so cut in by the hand of this heavenly gardener, that its very existence seems gone, and what we prized lies at our feet, cut off from that branch on which we once looked with pleasure!
You that are exercised in your souls – you that have felt the hand of God in you and upon you, have you never had much pruned off and cut in, that you thought was true religion? Have you not often been resting upon notions and opinions, and by painful exercises found these pruned off and you cut in? Have you not often been resting upon some fleshly excitement, some carnal imagination, some airy vision, some good opinion of others concerning you, and found in solemn moments, when pangs of distress and guilt laid hold upon you, that these things were cut off, so that you could take no comfort from them; and you look at them, and see them bleeding away in the dust, and at last withered, so that you yourself say, "They are only fit for the ash-heap, to be thrown away with the loppings of the vine?" You know little of what it is to be a fruit-bearing branch, if you have not had the pruning knife often to cut you in. It is not merely one pruning season, and then all pruning done with forever. The vine, of all trees, needs pruning most; it never will bear fruit, until it is well cut in and thoroughly pruned. And so a living soul is continually pushing forth those luxuriant shoots, that need to be cut off and pruned away by the hand of the heavenly gardener.
Now, what is God's object in these sharp exercises, these powerful temptations? these distressing convictions? It is to make the branches bring forth more fruit. "Every branch that bears fruit he prunes it," not to destroy it, but "that it may bring forth more fruit." Then afflictions, and distress, and convictions, and solemn and deep exercises of soul before God, and the weight and burden of harassing temptations, in the hand of God cause the branch to bear more fruit. They, in the hand of the Spirit, cause greater humility; for if a man has a deeper sight and sense of self, he will be humbled, broken, laid low. The Spirit working by them will cause also in a man more integrity and uprightness of heart before God. Feeling how much of his religion has been "weighed in the balances, and found lacking," and how much has been cut off by the apparently ruthless, unmerciful knife of the Gardener, he becomes exercised as to the remainder. "Is knowledge nothing? is the opinion of others nothing? is church membership nothing? is my having seen Christ in this passage and Christ in that, nothing?" says be to himself – "why, I have proved it is nothing, to raise up my soul in hours of temptation, and to comfort me in bitter seasons of distress; what, then, is it all a delusion? is the whole of my religion wrong to the very bottom? is it radically deficient? is it nothing else but the joy of the hypocrite, that is for a moment?" These anxious inquiries produce sighs and cries and groans and fervent prayers and wrestlings that the Lord would not allow us to be hypocrites, but would make us sincere and honest before his heart-searching presence.
So again, the loss of all this fleshly religion by the pruning knife of God, produces fruit not only before God, but before man. For it works in this way; the man begins now to be more faithful to the members of the church, with whom he is connected – more honest to all with whom he has to do in spiritual matters. He says – "Oh! I have been so deceived; thought I was such a Christian, I deemed myself so far advanced in the divine life, but, oh! how differently I feel now. Oh! the sufferings I have experienced under a sense of guilt and wrath! Oh! how little I feel to have been spiritually taught of God!"
And then, being weighed up in his own feelings, he will begin to put other people into the same scale. "Did you ever feel so?" he begins to ask. "Were you ever exercised thus? has the Lord ever brought you down?" He now can no longer mask everything under a cloak of amiability and taking things for granted, but begins to search and try whether others are under the same solemn teaching. This cutting in, then, makes him not only honest before God, but faithful to his fellow-sinners and his fellow-members.
Again – the pruning knife is often made the means, in the hand of the Lord, of kindling in him a spirit of fervent pouring out of soul before God. My friends, I appeal to your consciences. Where are your prayers in seasons of prosperity? Where are the sighs and groans of your spirit, when all things are flourishing in temporals, and all things are smooth in spirituals? Let conscience speak. Are not your prayers cold, lifeless, short, and formal? But when do you groan and sigh and cry to the Lord? when do you seek blessed communion with him, and feel that nothing but his presence can satisfy, nothing but his blood can atone, and nothing but his dying love shed abroad in your heart can sweetly lift up your soul into "the peace of God that passes all understanding?" When? where? how?
Why, it is when you are under solemn exercises, deep soul trials, passing under the rod of God's covenant, walking through the fires of temptation, wading through the waters of trouble. Oh! it is not just dropping down upon one's knees, and complimenting the Lord with a few words, however fluently uttered; but it is what is passing in the chambers of the heart – it is the pouring out of the very soul before him. That is prayer, and the rest is all delusion. And thus these exercises are, in the hands of the Spirit, the means of kindling in us earnest intercession at a throne of grace, for the blessings that we spiritually need.
Again – they are made useful also, in the hand of the Spirit, to make us spiritual and heavenly minded. Where are you – let honest conscience speak – where are you, when business flourishes, when customers increase, when worldly things smile, and everything wears a pleasing aspect? Are you spiritual? are you heavenly-minded? are you crying to the Lord in some secret corner? No! you are turning over your books, calculating the interest of your money; your eyes are here and there, looking alter some new fashion to attract customers to your shop, or, in some way or other – speculating with your imagination upon those things that shall feast your carnal appetite. Is it not so? Let 'honest conscience' speak in your bosom.
Now, when all things are against you, when the cutting winds of adversity blow upon your face, when everything seems to frown, and God adds his frown too, lowering, as it were, from behind temporal things, showing his reproving face behind the rebuking aspect of temporal events, is there not a going upward of heart after something that shall not pass away? Is there not the stretching forth of your hand to lay hold of the substance, when shadows are fast vanishing? Is there not some breathing forth of your soul after spiritual things, when temporal things are all cut away from under your feet, and that vision of peace and happiness which you were forming in your carnal mind is all swept away, like the delusive appearance of water in the desert, and leaves not a trace behind? Then you become spiritual and heavenly-minded.
Again – the Lord working by these exercises – for they themselves cannot do it – often strengthens and draws faith into exercise. We read of "the trial of our faith, which is much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire." Then faith must be tried; if it be gold bought of the Lord, it must be "gold tried in the fire." Now, these exercises, temptations, distresses, the powerful cuttings-in by the hand of the heavenly Gardener – try the faith that the Lord gives; and faith being tried and put to its utmost strength, a man begins to find what faith really is.
What a wonderful grace is faith! The heavier the load put upon it, the stronger the back of faith is to bear it. No one knows the power of faith, until he is brought into circumstances of difficulty and trial, which press and bear down this living principle. But this living principle upheaves itself, like the "leaven hidden in three measures of meal;" "it lives," as Deer says, "under load; though damped, it never dies." And thus it is drawn out and called forth under powerful temptations, and becomes strengthened thereby, brought forth into all its activity and living vigor, and thus bears the stamp of being the supernatural, living "faith of God's elect."
The "purging," then, of these fruit-bearing branches makes them bear more fruit. Not indeed often in our feelings; but we are very poor judges of this matter. The branch is more loaded with fruit, the more it droops to the earth. It is the tree that bears no fruit – the barren poplar – that shoots aloft into the sky. The vine, loaded with fruit, cannot raise itself up into the clouds; it needs support. We are very imperfect judges what fruit is. Those who bear most, think they bear least; those who bear least, think they bear most. Where shall we find one that boasts so much of fruit as a self-righteous Pharisee – an Arminian wrapped up in the rags of his own righteousness? Why, he is always prating about fruit, and never bears one single particle of it to the glory of God. But the poor, burdened, exercised, tried soul, that is stooping as it were under the weight of the temptations he is exercised with – this drooping branch is loaded with fruit, and the more he is loaded, the more he will bend to the ground. But it is the eyes of others, and not his own – and they must be discerning eyes too – that can distinguish that these are "the fruits of the Spirit," to the glory of God, who "works in him to will and to do of his good pleasure."
Now, which are you? You that profess the doctrines of grace, which are you? There is your doom; not from my poor, weak, perishing lips, but from the word of the living God. Read your sentence – hear your destiny. If you are a branch nominally in the living Vine, that bears no inward and outward fruit, there is your sentence recorded. The Gardener will "take you away," cast you upon the ash-heap, and from the ash-heap into the flames of endless perdition. But if you are a branch that is bearing fruit to his honor and praise and glory, he will "purge you, that you may bring forth more fruit;" and you shall shine in the realms of a never ending day.
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