A young mother was teaching her preschool age son about the value of zero by showing him apples. “If you have zero apples and I give you two, how many apples do you have?” “Two!” he exclaimed. “Yes, and if you have two apples and I take away two apples, how many apples do you have?” He frowned. “No apples?” “Right,” she replied. “Two take away two is zero.” He went off to play for a while and came back about ten minutes later. “But Mama, ” he said with some urgency, “why did you take away all my apples?”

Why, indeed?

I wonder if this is how the people of Israel felt about the Promised Land. God led them out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land after clearing away all the Canaanites so that Israel could prosper. Like a vine, they had been transplanted there to take deep root and flourish for many years:

Psalm 80 (Common English Bible)

⁸You brought a vine out of Egypt.
    You drove out the nations and planted it.
⁹ You cleared the ground for it;
    then it planted its roots deep, filling the land.
¹⁰ The mountains were covered by its shade;
    the mighty cedars were covered by its branches.
¹¹ It sent its branches all the way to the sea;
    its shoots went all the way to the Euphrates River.

This is one of several instances in the Old Testament when Israel is referred to as a vine (see Deuteronomy 32: 32-33, Isaiah 5:1, Jeremiah 2:21, and Hosea 10:1). Jesus referred to himself as the True Vine in John 10:15. (Read my devotional on this passage here.) Psalm 80 begins with a celebration of the power of the vine’s growth, but it’s dominance over the land is short-lived.

The vine’s devastation began with the fall of the southern Kingdom in 586BC, and soon the northern kingdom would fall in 721BC. This psalm is written between the two events, and we can feel the anguish of the psalmist as he watched his beloved Israel plucked up, torn down, and scattered far away:

¹² So why have you now torn down its walls
    so that all who come along can pluck its fruit,
¹³     so that any boar from the forest can tear it up,
    so that the bugs can feed on it?

The great sin of the nation caused this to happen. They had turned their backs on God and worshipped false idols. Because of their apostasy, God allowed invading nations to come and take them from plentiful abundance to absolute zero. The vine that had been planted by God’s own hand was chopped down into nothing.

¹⁴ Please come back, God of heavenly forces!
    Look down from heaven and perceive it!
Attend to this vine,
¹⁵     this root that you planted with your strong hand,
    this son whom you secured as your very own.
¹⁶ It is burned with fire. It is chopped down.
    They die at the rebuke coming from you.
¹⁷ Let your hand be with the one on your right side—
    with the one whom you secured as your own—
¹⁸     then we will not turn away from you!

The psalmist reminds us where we can go when our sin has left us with nothing and our life has taken on the quality of zero. Just as he reminded God of the fact that God had loved Israel enough to call them his own, he reminds us that we, too can approach the throne of grace in humble repentance and ask for restoration.

Revive us so that we can call on your name.
¹⁹     Restore us, Lord God of heavenly forces!
    Make your face shine so that we can be saved!

Only God could revive the nation, and only God can revive us. He is the Shepard of Israel who can replant and restore the vine in us. God’s deliverance comes through his son, Jesus Christ, the True Vine. We are Christ’s branches and we bear witness to the strength of God’s forgiving grace. When we come before him and ask to be saved, God forgives us. After all, the True Vine was born to take away the sins of the world.

And that is the best take away of all.

Sunshine Vine by Michelle Robertson