Wild Branches

On this our third day of Holy Week, as with quickened steps, we head up the narrow, sharp path to Golgotha, the place of the Skull, we are shown a most hopeful and telling picture. It speaks of wild branches. Whether we are aware of this or not, the text has made a few things clear to us about wild branches. I’m using the word branches and shoots interchangeably. Here are three, which directly serve our present purpose.

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. Romans 11: 17 – 18.

There are still wild olive branches around.
As long as there is, a wild olive shoot, there must be a wild olive vine or tree.
As long as there is, a wild olive shoot, there must be wild olive fruit.

These are extremely important and necessary to our understanding and acceptance of truth, and expressly, salvation truth, in its magnificence and completeness. Let’s bore through this, if we have to.

The wild olive branch is one that is uncultivated and knows nothing about living and feeding from the True Vine. Curiously interesting, is the fact that the text uses the same named kind of tree or vine, the same name of, olive. In other words, the text speaks of a wild olive, not a wild sycamore, or a wild juniper, for that matter. No, it speaks of a wild olive. In other words, cultivated or uncultivated, it carries the name of olive.

Straightway, my mind goes to Jesus when He speaks of other sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. John 10: 16. Jesus has stated that there are other sheep, not cows, or goats, but other sheep that are out there. Keeping the language of our text, we can safely describe these sheep as wild sheep, stray sheep, undomesticated sheep, but none the less sheep, which Jesus calls His. He will domesticate them, as it were, when He brings them into the fold, or sheep pen. Is this not the same sentiment also, of the wild olive vine? The branches of the wild olive vine are accepted and brought into the true Vine, to be one with all branches in the Vine.

Where are we, as we climb the mount to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull? We note Jesus, who is on His way to Jerusalem, like a lamb to the slaughter, aware of His suffering, agony and total pain, traversing the journey with determination and resolve. It is on His way to Jerusalem to be crucified, that He meets a wild shoot, an uncultivated branch. The man, who is a chief tax collector, is so hated by the Jewish people, he is not even seen as a person worth saving.

Jesus, passing along the Jericho road, enroute to His final destination, before shedding His Blood, stops to acknowledge a wild branch, and name him as one of Abraham’s. Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. Luke 19: 9b. Will you really listen to Jesus and see His passion for sinners? He knows full well that Zacchaeus is a sinner, but He also knows full well that He is Zacchaeus’ Saviour. He does not name this sinner as the son of Satan, or the son of evil for that matter. Just a few minutes literally, with Jesus and Zacchaeus is a changed man. Jesus is pleased, most delighted to refer to him, publicly at that, as a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. Luke 19: 10.

Will you ask yourself, as I have honestly asked myself, this huge question? Am I a wild branch? I am. I must be, for I am an uncultivated branch of an unwanted olive tree. You and I are wild branches but in His tender grace and mercy, Jesus has noticed us and has called us to Him. We have responded, with the help of the Holy Spirit working it all out in us, and we have been called sons and daughters of Abraham, father of faith.