Jesus was the master of figurative language. He used stories to proclaim his great truths. He told parables, he painted word pictures, he referred to ordinary things in order that he might underscore extraordinary and eternal truths. The disciples would have been able to identify this image of Jesus, the image of the vine and the branches, fruit bearing and pruning, dead branches burned. They would have been able to identify with it because Palestine was the land of vineyards. But more than that, the vine was the symbol of Israel. Over and over again in the Old Testament, in the Psalms and in the prophets, you have Israel being referred to as the vine, and even more, as the vineyard of God. But how shocking it must have been for those disciples when they heard Jesus. In one bold unadultera…