The Great Vine Picture.

Now they’re walking down the street, silently, the Master in the lead, with John and Peter close by.[117] The moon is at the full.  Now they see the temple, the moonlight falling full upon it.  And the great brass grape-vine with which it had been beautified by Herod at his building of it shines with wondrous beauty in the enchantment of moonlight.

And now the Master is speaking again.  Very quietly the words come as they still gaze at the beauty of the brass vine.  Listen to Him, “I am the true vine, and My Father the vine-gardener.”  Here is the illustration that exactly pictures what He had been saying in the upper room.  It supplies the fourth word, the fourth outer shape that word believe takes on, believe, that is—­love, that is—­obey, that is—­abide.

Look at the vine, then you have the whole story pictured, simple, clear, full.  Each of these four words grows out of the other as fruit out of blossom, and blossom out of the new branch and that out of the old stock of the vine:  believe, love, obey, abide; vine, new branches, tiny blossom, fruit.  The fruit grows out of the vine; yet it is the very life of the vine. Abide grows out of believe, yet it is the very heart and inner life of believe.

So He goes on ringing the changes back and forth, now here, now there. Pruning—­that insures fruit, and more and better. Praying—­that is the fruit, some of it; that naturally grows out of the abiding. “My words”—­that is part of the abiding, the life-juice of the vine coming into branch and blossom and fruit.  “Joy”—­that is the rich red juice of the grape in your mouth. “Friends”—­that is the other word for abide.  That’s what abiding makes and reveals. Abiding—­that is what friends do:  that’s what friendship is, the real thing. Obey—­that is the swing of step with our great Friend as we go along the road together.  So these clusters of rich ripe fruit hang thick on the vine of this simple teaching-talk as they walk along in the moonlight.

And now they’re passing through some of the narrower streets as they make their way east towards the city gate.[118] And these narrow streets are shadowed.  And you feel the shadows creeping into His talk.  The world will hate them.  Of course.  This is a natural result of the abiding.  The outer crowd can no more put up with the Jesus-swayed man than with Jesus Himself.  And the hate would be aggressive.

But if they would clearly understand ahead what to expect it would help them keep their feet when the worst storm came.  And by staying steady and true through the worst that came, they would be of the greatest service.  The Holy Spirit in them would reach out and talk to that outer crowd.  He would make clear to them their awful sin in killing Jesus, the spotless purity and rightness of the absent Jesus, and the terrific fact that the prince of the world whom they rally to so faithfully is actually judged, doomed and damned.  Then He adds, “now in a little bit I’ll be gone from you.  Then a little later, I’ll be with you again.”