John 15 series...verse 1

Today we will be looking at the first verse of our study.

1 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.

John 15:1

We start with looking at "I Am" not only because they are the first two words of John 15 but because they are significant.  



There seems to be a little bit of controversy over how many "I Am" statements are in John- some say 7 some 8 and like the last photo - even 9.

The mighty God of the universe, the one who created our world in seven days, called Himself "I Am" in Exodus 3:14

14 And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And He said, "Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' "

Exodus 3:14

There is so much deeper we could go in studying the "I Am" statements but because this is not going to be an in depth study we will stop at this point. However, while I was looking for the images for this post, I noticed an interesting answer on Yahoo answers that stated that the "I Am" statements in John referred to the "Seven objects described and placed in the Israelite Tabernacle." And it seems to me to be a very likely conclusion since the earthly tabernacle was a copy and shadow of the one in Heaven.

5 who serve the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, "See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."

Hebrews 8:5

And the whole system of the sanctuary(or Tabernacle) on earth was to help us understand what Jesus was going to do and is doing for us in heaven. So it seems very likely that is the reason why John wrote about these "I Am" statements throughout his book.

A very good book to do more research on this topic is called "The Cross and Its Shadow" by Stephen Haskell.

Moving on we look at the words "the true vine". "True" = comes from the Greek word alethinas, which means "genuine." This tells us there are counterfeits and we need to make sure we are connected to the True Vine.

Vinedresser- in other versions - it is called gardener. The KJV uses the word Husandman. This is a Greek word georgos which means "a worker of the soil."

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I hope you will come back next Wednesday when we look at verse 2.