Grape Expectations

“My Well-beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes.” (Isaiah 5:1-2)

In the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie Great Expectations based on a modern version of the Charles Dickens novel, a hapless painter in New York is pursuing his unrequited and haughty childhood love. God has immense love for us and He is calling us to be fruitful and multiply as the choicest vine because we are plucked out of Egypt and planted in God's holy ground. Egypt represents sin and the wicked ways of the world. “You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations, and planted it.” (Psalm 80:8).

As a noble vine, God has not just Grape Expectations, but like Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, from us. “Also your people shall all be righteous; they shall inherit the land forever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified.” (Isaiah 60:21). We are God’s vineyard, we are to glorify God, to fulfill His expectations by producing good grapes from the vine instead of wild grapes. God is the master winemaker who will sell no wine before its time, and we are to please Him and not displease Him like Israel did. “Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before Me into the degenerate plant of an alien vine?” (Jeremiah 2:21).

The dispersed believers from the tribe of Joseph received the best blessing from Jacob: “Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; His branches run over the wall...his bow remained in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob.” (Genesis 49:22-24). God is expecting nothing less than good spiritual fruits from us, not religious nuts because He chose us. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give you.” (John 15:16). If a vine does not produce fruits then it is useless, and the secret of fruit bearing is abiding as the branch managers in the Vine of Jesus (John 15:5).

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