“Spare it this Year Also”
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Almighty “shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings
of the deep that lieth under.”
Genesis 49:22, 25
. So God had planted
Israel as a goodly vine by the wells of life. He had made His vineyard
“in a very fruitful hill.” He had “fenced it, and gathered out the stones
thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine.”
Isaiah 5:1, 2
.
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“And He looked that it should bring forth grapes, and it brought
forth wild grapes.”
Isaiah 5:2
. The people of Christ’s day made a
greater show of piety than did the Jews of earlier ages, but they were
even more destitute of the sweet graces of the Spirit of God. The
precious fruits of character that made the life of Joseph so fragrant and
beautiful, were not manifest in the Jewish nation.
God in His Son had been seeking fruit, and had found none. Israel
was a cumberer of the ground. Its very existence was a curse; for it
filled the place in the vineyard that a fruitful tree might fill. It robbed
the world of the blessings that God designed to give. The Israelites
had misrepresented God among the nations. They were not merely
useless, but a decided hindrance. To a great degree their religion was
misleading, and wrought ruin instead of salvation.
In the parable the dresser of the vineyard does not question the
sentence that the tree, if it remained fruitless, should be cut down; but
he knows and shares the owner’s interest in that barren tree. Nothing
could give him greater joy than to see its growth and fruitfulness. He
responds to the desire of the owner, saying, “Let it alone this year also,
till I shall dig about it and dung it; and if it bear fruit, well.”
The gardener does not refuse to minister to so unpromising a plant.
He stands ready to give it still greater care.
“Judge, I pray you, betwixt Me and My vineyard. What
could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have
not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should
bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?”
Isaiah
5:3, 4
.
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He will make its surroundings most favorable, and will lavish upon it
every attention.
The owner and the dresser of the vineyard are one in their interest
in the fig tree. So the Father and the Son were one in their love for
the chosen people. Christ was saying to His hearers that increased