He Is the Vine, and We Are the Branches
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might be a blessing in disguise and to just bear their cross. Yet, they get out in their garden on a
Tuesday afternoon, and if they have a blighted, sick tomato plant, do they stop and say, “Thank
You Jesus for blessing my tomato plant with this blight.” Have you ever heard someone say that?
Or has anyone taken you over to their house and said, “Look at my flower bed,” and they’re all
dead? “Look how the Lord blessed my flowers. Now, we don’t understand it, but He blessed
me.” You don’t talk that way. Christians don’t talk that way. Why? Because we have enough
sense to know that sickness in the cornfield is not a blessing. Sickness in the flower bed is not a
blessing. Sickness in your tree is not a blessing; it’s a curse.
Well, if sickness in the tomato plant is a curse, then sickness in Timmy is a curse, or in Tina or
Tammy or whomever. It’s the same stuff. Sickness is not a blessing. It is not a blessing in
disguise, and it’s not a blessing any other wise. Sickness is a curse. It’s not the will of God. It
doesn’t please Him.
If you want to get sickness out of your flower bed or out of your garden, you’ll pull up those
plants. You’ll throw them away. You’ll separate them from the others. You want to get them out
of there. Why? So the others don’t get contaminated.
So don’t sit in church and try to pretend sickness is good in you. If it’s good in you, it’s good in
your plants.
We have a holy Vine that we are connected to, a pure Vine. The life that flows from the Vine
into the branches is completely pure life and light. There is no corruption. He is light, and in Him
is no darkness at all. He is life. There is no death in God.
Some people say, “Oh, now, death is the tool of God. God uses death.” No! Death is the enemy
of God. First Corinthians 15 says so. It’s the last enemy that will be put underfoot. (verse 26)
It’s appointed unto man once to die. (Hebrews 9:27) Our bodies are still mortal, and if He tarries
His coming, we will live out our life and go, but even that is not His perfect will. Man was made
to
never
die. That’s why your body resists it even when it comes time. Something about it is not
right. You were not made to die.
But soon and very soon, this body is going to be changed, and this mortal is going to put on
immortality (1 Corinthians 15:54). This body will be in a condition where it will never age, never
wear out, and never die. Won’t that be wonderful? We’ve already discussed that in the
meantime—even though we don’t have the whole resurrection to enjoy right now—we get to
enjoy the earnest of it, the firstfruits of it now. (1 Corinthians 15:20) We have the quickening of
our mortal body that enables us to be strong and healthy as long as we need to be. If you’re not
experiencing it, you ought to be claiming it and believing for it, because it’s still the will of God.
Jesus is the Vine. Do we have disease coming out of the Vine into us? Absolutely not. He is a
healthy, strong Vine, and we ought to be healthy, strong branches.
