Roots and Fruits

Well, we continue on in Matthew chapter 7 as we have been looking at verses 15 through 20.

We began that last week, and that was in keeping with the context, which is held together by both verse 15 as well as verse 20.

The context is speaking against false teachers, false prophets, those terms being equivalent.

False teachers are to be recognized by their fruits. Jesus says it's by their fruit that you will know them.

And so we considered that, and really last week is in keeping with the immediate context of Matthew 7, 15 through 20.

But as we've seen from the very beginning of chapter 7, Jesus is bringing His sermon to a conclusion.

He's calling for a response. And as so much of the Scriptures do, the response that He's calling for is a recognition of which way you are going, which end you are walking toward, which path you are upon, which kind of tree you are, what kind of foundation you are building upon.

In other words, even as we begin our service, Psalm 1, there's only two ways to live, only two paths upon which every single person is on one or the other, only two ends, either to be with God in glory or apart from God, in hellfire, everlasting.

So Jesus is opening our eyes. Jesus is splashing cold water on our face. Jesus is the great prophet who

Moses said, when He speaks, you must listen to Him. And these are the words of Jesus. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down, thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.

So last week we looked at false teachers, and as I said last week, this morning, we want to consider a little more broadly and more applicable to us all, not the immediate context of false teachers, but where chapter 7 as a whole is going.

And you find this imagery of fruitfulness, or what kind of tree, what kind of roots we have, this corresponds to many teachings in Scripture.

The idea of fruits, the idea of trees, is a common metaphor, especially when it comes to describing the

Christian life. The Christian life is a life of fruit, wrought by the

Holy Spirit, wrought by a knowledge of God unto salvation. So I want to dive into that a little bit this morning, and really draw some of these things out, because it's very much in the momentum of where we're going through the rest of the chapter.

Of course, Jesus is wanting us to discern fruitfulness in the lives around us.

That must extend to us as well, fruitfulness within. What kind of tree am I? I can't know unless I examine the kind of fruit

I'm bearing. And if I'm a bad tree, or in the original, a diseased tree, a rotten tree, perhaps a decaying tree, it may be such that I'm not just bearing bad fruit,

I'm no longer bearing fruit at all. I'm fruitless. It's another way of looking at this that we'll see shortly.

Fruit, in the New Testament, to speak very broadly, is talking about deeds.

And I want to give sort of a broad survey up front of what we mean by that. Fruit, particularly as works, fruit as loves, and fruit as service.

These are generally the ways I would distinguish the common import of fruit.

Fruit as works, but what kind of works? Well, works, loves, service.

That's what I want us to see up front. And then we'll start to unpack the verse in more detail.

Fruit of good works. Often we find fruit as synonymous with good works.

I'll give you an example, I'll give you a few examples. Romans 1 .13, Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you, but I was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other

Gentiles. Or again, Romans 7 .4, Therefore, my brethren, you've become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, that is the bridegroom

Christ, to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. In other words, that we should have fruitful lives.

What is that fruitfulness? It's good works. Things that abound in deeds of love, deeds of service, these are good works.

This is what the New Testament commonly describes as fruit. Now it's more than just what we do.

It's embedded within our character. In fact, it emanates from our character. It's who we are.

Our actions, even our words, it flows out of the kind of character we are. Our character is defined by what kind of tree we are.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. A godly character cannot bear ungodly fruit.

Now, of course, there may be things that wither on the ends of the branches. There may be blight. There may be times of drought.

There may be ways that branches are malformed. But what you will not get is grapes from thistles.

You don't go blueberry picking from thorns. You don't find the fruitfulness from plants that are so toxic, so deadly, so sharp, that they don't produce fruit to begin with.

That's the first point that Jesus makes. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

Those plants only injure. Those plants aren't meant to be fruitful. And so, again,

Paul, when he's speaking to the church at Philippi, he's viewing them like an orchard. And he says that his prayer for them is that they would be filled with the fruits of righteousness.

What are the fruits of righteousness? Good works. I want you to abound in these things. I want you to be fruitful, that is.

I want you to be active, abounding, increasing in your love, in your service, in deeds unto

God, and for those who both know Him and reject Him. So he doesn't pray for them to be filled with worldly acclaim.

He doesn't pray for them to be comfortable in life. He doesn't pray for any ambitions they may have in their flesh. He's praying for fruit that accords with righteousness.

Fruits of righteousness. Another way of saying that is simply good works.

Good works. In verse 22 in chapter 1 of Philippians, he says,

If I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor. What is labor?

It's work. Fruit. Good works. Good labor. Labor that produces fruit.

That's his whole business. That's his whole life. For the Christian, that's their whole life. I'm seeking the fruits of righteousness.

Or to put it in a Matthew 5 gloss, I'm seeking kingdom righteousness. A righteousness that exceeds that of the

Pharisees, without which I will not enter the kingdom. So we're looking at fruits.

And the question is, what kind of tree are we? We cannot have fruitful labor. We cannot bear the kind of fruit that accords with righteousness if we have not been created in Christ Jesus for good works.

In other words, we're all born as dead and decaying trees. You can't muster good fruit up from the flesh.

You've been born thorns and thistles. That's the problem. That's curse imagery. When Adam fell, we all became a curse.

We can't produce the fruit of righteousness. That can't come out of fallen human nature. I can have the appearance of it, like the fig tree we'll talk about in a moment.

I can seem to have some semblance, some afterglow, but I can't have it at my core.

I can't have it at my heart. I can't have it in a way that approves me unto God. I am dead, decaying, diseased as a tree before God, unless He uproots me and recreates me entirely anew.

So you want to have good fruit? In other words, you want to have good works? You must be created in Christ Jesus for those good works.

You must be created as a new tree for that fruit of righteousness. It's the fruit of God who's prepared beforehand all that you would walk in, even the fact that He's prepared you beforehand to walk on this narrow path that so few find because the way is difficult.

It's the fruit of God who is at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure. It's the fruit of Him who began that good work and will see it through as a faithful vinedresser, knowing that you'll abide in Him for He's the source of your fruitfulness.

Ultimately, it's God's labor, God's working. He is the vinedresser. We are the branches. You see, there is no good fruit, there are no good works, there is no fruit of righteousness unless you have been created and planted, watered and cultivated and pruned by Him.

We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ as Paul says in Colossians 1, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and your love for all the saints because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel which has come to you, as it has also in all of the world.

And what is that word doing? It's bringing forth fruit. That's what the word always does.

Jesus says, my word does not return to me empty. The word is always producing fruit.

Sometimes the fruitfulness that the word is producing is actually the result of the pruning of God's word.

Isn't that often the case? We become fruitful because God has cut back the branches. Sometimes He cuts really deep, doesn't

He? My parents have this beautiful Japanese maple tree out on their front yard.

I grew up loving it. There's only a few weeks in the year where the leaves are bright red. And we loved just watching it out the window.

You wouldn't know it, but the tree was actually dying. Still had plenty of leaves, but less and less leaves, more and more bare branches.

And so they hired someone to come, an arborist to come and to prune it. And you would have thought all they left was a stump.

They pruned it back so far. I didn't think a tree could survive that kind of pruning.

But the arborist is faithful. He knows. No, there's only the healthy branches if they thrive, even though everything else has been pruned off.

If these branches thrive, these roots are sure, this tree will grow, this tree will flourish once more.

God is faithful to prune us. He does that with His word. He does that with the rebuke, the exhortation, the conviction, the encouragement, the comfort.

All these things are producing fruit in the lives of the Christian. Wherever the word of the truth of the gospel goes forth, it brings forth fruit.

That fruit also accords, secondly, with love. It's not just good works, but love as well.

That's fruit. 2 Peter 1 says, But also for this very reason, giving all diligence and to your faith, virtue, to your virtue, knowledge, to your knowledge, self -control, to self -control, perseverance, and to perseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love.

For if these things are yours and they abound, you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see the train there? Faith is not something that you have on a little panel you bought at Hobby Lobby and you keep it on your living room wall.

As I was talking with Gus earlier this week, as we went out for coffee, just talking about faith.

Faith is actually laying hold of both the warnings and the promises of God.

That's what faith is. Faith is not some abstract quality. I have faith. Great. Faith in what?

Faith is belief. I believe. Great. Believe in what? Abraham is the father of all those who have faith.

What did Abraham's faith look like? At such and such a time I will come and Sarah will conceive.

Okay, Lord, that's your word. I believe it. He had faith in something. The word that produces that faith produces that faith in such a way that then the faith lays hold of the word.

What have you warned, Lord? You told me that unfruitful trees are cut down and thrown into the fire.

Lord, I believe. You told me that you never repel any who come to you in repentance and faith.

Lord, I believe. I have faith in both your warnings and your promises, you see.

So you begin there. Faith. Nothing without faith. But with faith comes virtue.

This is faith proven in character. This is faith taking root in a person's life. And with that virtue, there is an abounding knowledge, knowledge of oneself as a result of knowing

God rightly. We understand ourselves rightly. We understand our lives and the lives of those around us rightly.

We see God, therefore we see ourselves. You cannot see yourself rightly if you cannot see

God. Calvin's Institutes, book one, he makes that point crystal clear.

It's absolutely right. It's in returning to God and the glimpse of God that we come to know ourselves.

We don't know what humanity was until we come to the last atom. Now we see the express image of the invisible

God. That's what humanity was meant to be. And knowing God and knowing ourselves in this way, having this virtue born in our character by faith, we have self -control.

Now I can constrain my flesh. I see it rise up. I know no good thing dwells in me. That's not just some little item

I check mentally. Oh yes, Calvinists are supposed to say this. No, I know it experientially.

I see it. It's not just something I say with half a smirk and go, oh well, we're all sinners, you know, and we're really depraved as sinners, you know, total depravity.

I can't say that with half a smirk. I experience the truth of that day by day. But with this faith leading to virtue, this virtue leading to knowledge,

I can have some element of control. Yes, this old nature remains within me and yet I can mortify it.

And so I'm not ignorant to Satan's devices, nor do I deny the power of the flesh, but I go to war with it.

And if you're not going to war with it, you're just self -deceived. You've already fallen off this train of 2

Peter 1. No wonder that requires perseverance. If self -control requires warfare, what do you have to do in warfare?

Persevere. You don't lose heart. You keep fighting. You keep slogging through these difficult thorny paths of sanctification because there's no other way to life.

If you're not killing sin, sin is killing you. I don't know how many of you know of a wonderful author, incredibly brilliant theologian,

Reformed Baptist pastor out on the west coast who had his letter of confession presented publicly this past week.

And it was just a reminder to me, being

Calvinistic, being confessional, being Reformed, authoring books, knowing the questions and answers to every catechism that came out of the 18th century, none of these things can actually save you.

In fact, they might damn you. It's the perseverance.

If we're not fighting sin, we're deceiving ourselves.

Sin is taking root and becoming empowered in our lives. And men godlier and more intelligent and more faithful and more diligent with more integrity than any of us have fallen.

It's a stark reminder. We're taking these things to heart. What kind of tree am

I? What kind of fruit am I bearing? Do I really have faith in the warnings and the promises of God?

Or is this some mental exercise in game to me? Do I really think my eternal state is at stake?

Am I hearing Jesus, the prophet of God rightly? There's only two ways to live.

Take care. Beware. Guard your soul. Well, how are we going to do that?

Walking in this perseverance accords with godliness. It's funny, you start to see every hidden evil.

It brings your head very low. And so in meekness and humility you carry yourself about. The godly never actually see themselves as all that godly.

Probably one of the godliest men next to Jesus Christ would have been Paul the Apostle. And he's often introducing himself or reminding his congregants that he's the chief of sinners.

That's his title. When you have that kind of humility and meekness, what's next in the chain?

Brotherly kindness. I don't browbeat.

I won't backbite. Where does that brotherly kindness come from? The godliness. That's actually something

I don't even see because I've been brought so low in this combat against my flesh as I persevere to have self -control.

That comes from my knowledge of God and my knowledge of myself, which is that virtue born by faith in my life.

We're just going back down to the source. I believe God's Word. I believe His warnings and His promises.

And what's the fruit of this whole tree that began by faith? What's the zenith?

What's the epitome? Love. If these things are yours,

Peter says, and they're increasing, they're abounding, you won't be barren, you won't be unfruitful in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. You really have believed Him. You really have known Him. Love will be the proof of that.

Love in all of these ways. You don't have biblical love if you don't have everything else in that chain that leads to it.

That's the key. No shortcuts. Anything less than that is not biblical love.

Anything less than love is barren and unfruitful in the full knowledge of the

Son of God. So that these things are born out by faith because God first loves us, and then they're grown and cultivated and abounding as trees planted in waters of righteousness because God has given us a love for Him.

Just take that end part in reverse. If these things are not yours, and they are not abounding in your life, you are barren and unfruitful in the knowledge of Christ.

That's what 1 John is saying. Beloved, let us love, for love is of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows

God. Whoever doesn't love doesn't know God. How could you? God is love.

That kind of knowledge bears fruit. What kind of fruit we're bearing corresponds to the faith that we're having.

Do we actually believe in God? Has our faith planted us as a tree bearing the fruits of righteousness?

And then that love. Thirdly, service. Paul often uses this language of fruit that's abounding to the account.

He talks about fruit as gaining interest on what God has given. And so he wants to spend himself a little further.

He wants churches to sacrifice a little bit more. He talks about that as fruit. He says to the church at Philippi, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving, just you alone.

For even in Thessalonica you sent aid once and again for my necessities. Not that I'm seeking the gifts, truly.

I seek the fruit that abounds to your account. In other words, you're gaining an interest.

You're giving an increase. The imagery here is like an interest -bearing savings account.

And Paul is essentially saying I'm always seeking your profit. In other words, your fruit, your increase, your abundance.

And so he has this understanding. It's part of storing up treasure in heaven. That's fruit. It's fruit.

It's the kind of fruit that accords with Jesus saying I was hungry and you fed me. I was in prison, you visited me.

I remember it well. He's saying I won't ever forget it. When I was naked, you clothed me.

You came to the least of my brothers and sisters. You did these things for me. In fact, you were just doing it to me. That's fruit.

It's abounding. That's what Paul is desiring to see more and more of at a church that's already doing that.

You see, just more fruit. More fruitfulness. More profit. More increase.

That's his desire. Don't pull back now. Don't spare now. This is a service, the idea of sacrifice.

Therefore, by Jesus, the writer of Hebrews says, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name.

But do not forget to do good and to share. For with all these, God is well pleased. That's the idea, the fruitfulness that abounds.

It's a fruit of service, a fruit of love, a fruit of profit. Now, having that sort of broad display at hand, let's come back to the verses at hand.

Jesus says in verse 16, you will know by fruit. Men do not gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles.

Again, you have this picture of fruitlessness right out of Genesis 3.

It's the curse that God places upon the land and upon man's labor in the land.

You want bread? Guess what? You're going to get thorns and thistles. By the sweat of your brow and through these things, you'll have to bring forth bread.

So you have something that was meant to be spontaneously, inherently fruitful. No blight.

No drought. No need to prune. And now in its place is growing decay, disease, rot, blight.

Instead of healthy, wonderful, luscious fruits, there's this image of decay and toxicity and that which is poisonous.

This is all imagery of the fall. Of course, looking at thorns and thistles, that which cannot produce fruit will not produce fruit.

That's human nature as a result of the fall. Fruitless. Bad tree.

Even so, Jesus says, every good tree bears good fruit. A bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. You see how he keeps circling over this? Just in case you're not hearing it, let me say it again.

Let me say it another way and let me say that other way again. He keeps repeating. He's trying to press the weight of there's only two ways to live.

What kind of tree are you? Have you been planted by the streams of living water so that your leaf will not wither?

Has God created you anew in Christ Jesus for his good works to be fruitful unto him? If so, you're a good tree.

You'll bear good fruit. If these things are yours and abounding, you truly know the

Son of God. If these things are not yours and they are not abounding, why do you deceive yourself that you're this kind of tree?

Well, don't deceive yourself because he goes on to say every tree that's not bearing this kind of fruit, it gets cut down.

I would have never known my parents' Japanese maple tree was on the verge of being cut down. It still had leaves.

But at some point, as Jesus would say, why does it take up the ground? The disciple is to produce fruit, not muster up fruit within himself, but because he's been created as a good tree, the disciple will produce fruit, not perfectly, but consistently.

Not always abundantly, for there's seasons of pruning and there's times of drought, but consistently over the length of the walk there's going to be fruit.

And where there's not fruit, where there is drought, where there is a need for pruning, that fruit is going to come out of repentance.

Bear fruit, we read in Matthew 3 .18, bear fruit worthy of repentance. In other words, in accords with repentance.

Sometimes in the Christian life, the only fruit you're bearing is repentance. I have nothing good to show me other than the fact that I repent,

Lord, against You and You only have I sinned. That's fruit according with repentance. That's David as a fruitful tree in that very confession.

And what you understand from that, as Jesus is even saying here in Matthew 7, the fruit will always show you the true character of the tree.

I don't need to identify the bark. I don't need to have a snapshot and have chat GPT help me understand what kind of tree this is.

I just have to see the fruit. That's all I have to see. I'll tell you what kind of tree it is if you can give me the fruit.

The fruit will, maybe not instantly, but the fruit will show the true character of the tree.

Remember Jesus' warning here. False prophets come in sheep's clothing inwardly. It's not apparent.

The sheep might just think, this is great, but eventually there's enough bloodshed around that one strange looking sheep that you start to wonder if they really are a sheep.

That's the idea. Inwardly, they're ravenous. It takes time for that which is within to come out, but that which is within will always come out.

Be sure of this. Your sin will find you out. This pastor on the west coast, eight months of adultery, maintaining everything else.

Inwardly, something was going on that was not true externally. Before God, even though He Himself couldn't see it,

He was a certain way that no one else could see or perceive. And so long as He lived for that perception,

He had no regard for how God was looking at Him. Do you see? Jesus is saying, do not be deceived.

Beware. Jesus is speaking to the inward reality.

That's been the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount. It doesn't really matter if externally you seem to fit the bill.

What kind of heart do you have before God? Where's your roots planted? What kind of tree are you?

It's the inward reality. It's God seeing within. What are the false teachers? They're just like chapter 6.

They're the hypocrites. The external is all they live for. It's not the internal. There's no inward plea with God.

Well, whatever is within must come out. The fruit of our heart comes out of our mouths. The fruit of our character spills out of our lives.

We cannot contain it. We can try to for a time, but it becomes far too exhausting. That's the story of every apostate.

They can only go so far, and then they instantly disappear. What happened? Well, whatever happened didn't happen overnight.

It didn't happen on that Wednesday morning. It had been happening for many months, if not years beforehand. What's inside of us must come out.

Whatever a tree is will be borne out by that tree. A bad tree will bear bad fruit.

A good tree will bear good fruit. Remember when

Jesus came to that barren fig tree, and it had this promise of leaves. And so He was hungry, and He went up expecting to find figs, but it was just leaves.

It was false advertising. It was like you see these food commercials, and they have the big stack of fluffy pancakes bouncing on the table, and then this butter oozing over the sides, and you're drooling as you're watching the ad.

And then behind the scenes, it turns out that's mattress foam and motor oil for the syrup. You wanted to dive in and start eating.

It was just all false. It looked so right, but it was all wrong.

Jesus goes to this fig tree, because He's expecting, if it has that kind of foliage, it's got to have fruit.

And He can't find any. It's like when

I was still a bachelor, and you go and you look in the fridge, you don't see anything, and then ten minutes later, you go back to the fridge.

Maybe I missed something. Is there anything here? But there's nothing.

And so Jesus says, may no fruit ever come from you again. Now that's not

Jesus having a little tantrum. That's Jesus doing a prophetic act as He's about to enter into Jerusalem, into the temple precinct, and saying, you had every condition for fruitfulness.

The covenants, the promises, the priesthood, the shadows and types,

God's own presence. You had foliage unto God, and there was never fruit, and so no fruit will come from you ever again.

It's what Jesus is doing as a prophet. In line with what the prophets had said all along,

Hosea 9, 10, I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers like the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season, but they separated themselves to Baal.

They became an abomination. I found them as something fruitful. I planted them as a good tree.

Look at what they've become. Or Micah 7, 1. There's no cluster of grapes for me to eat.

There's none of the figs that I'm craving. Jeremiah 8, 13.

In judgment, He says, I'm going to take away their harvest. There'll be no grapes on the vine. There'll be no figs on the tree.

Their leaves are going to wither. Joel 1, 7. He laid waste to my vine. He ruined my fig tree.

He stripped it bare and thrown it away and now the branches are made white. That's God's judgment, do you see? It's the imagery of a tree that had the promise of fruitfulness and became diseased and decayed and wasted away.

Why does it take up the ground? In Luke's version, he gives a parable.

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard and he came seeking fruit on it, but he couldn't find any. And so he said to the keeper of the vineyard, look, for three years

I've come looking for fruit on this fig tree and I can't find it. So cut it down. But he answered,

Sir, let it alone this year too until I dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit, well, if not, after that you can cut it down.

You see this long -suffering patience of the Lord. I keep coming. I'm hungry.

I want to dine with you. I want to eat of you. You say that I planted you.

You say that I'm watering you. You say that I'm your growth. But I come to you and it's all leaves.

Three years I've been coming to you and it's all leaves. Why won't I cut you down? No, no, no. Just a little more time,

Lord. As someone here, is it their last time?

Funny thing what it looks like from our vantage point when a tree is cut down. The people that you worship next to one year are the people that hate

God next year. That's a tree cut down. I've had many trees cut down in my life over the few decades

I've walked with God. Many people, of course, think they'll escape judgment simply because they have all this religious foliage.

Who's Ross preaching to? Must be people outside these walls. I'm here, aren't

I? That's proof. I've got fruit. I show up. I sit through a really long service weekly.

That's fruit. That counts for something, doesn't it? Well, it's a lot of foliage. It's not necessarily fruit.

You might be in the orchard. It doesn't mean you're fruitful. This whole episode in Matthew 7 is condemning profession without practice because the whole cry of the

Bible is that we are known by our fruits. You will know us by our fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit.

A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. God alone creates a good tree. God alone gives it growth. God alone will cultivate and prune it.

And if that's true, then the life of the believer must show forth his work. So the emphasis in Matthew 7, just like Luke 13, just like any of the things we've seen, is it is not unto man's eyes that we live and die, but it's unto

God's eyes. It's not how we appear, brothers and sisters. It's what we produce.

It doesn't matter how I appear to others, to myself. What is my life showing forth?

What's coming out of the edges and corners of my speech, of my thoughts, of my activity?

Of course, the immediate context is the false teacher, but we're going broadly beyond.

Of course, the fruits of the false teacher are many ways that are described. The fruit of a bad tree, of a false teacher, is controversy, 1

Timothy 1, 3, and 4. Division, 1 Timothy 6, 3, and 5. Destruction of faith or of those who have faith, 2

Timothy 2, 17, and 18. Or to be destroyed by heresy, 2

Peter 2. The reality, though, is Jesus says, you'll know them by their fruit, and it's not always that apparent, is it?

It takes time. It takes time. It rarely is that obvious, not as obvious as it should be.

I've learned more in the past few months because of sort of a scare than I ever thought I would know about the eweberry plant, these

English hedges that are very common to the northeast, and they're evergreen, small bushes, they're very, very common.

In fact, so common that they're on the Berry Common for some god -awful reason, where children walk and play.

And it has these little red berries. I want to help you all identify and avoid this plant, which began at Genesis 3.

It has an opening at the bottom and a large seed within it. Now, the berry, you can squeeze, and you can even pull apart the flesh, and it's very sweet.

The liquid is very sweet. It's perfectly edible. If you eat the seed, even one seed,

God forbid two, it'll stop your heart. That's a false teacher.

Little bits around the edges that are sweet, edible, really good.

Give me your T -shirt. Let's fill up. This is great. And you might even realize over time, we do have to be careful to avoid that little pit in the center.

But it just takes one crunch, one little seed. Things that are sweet aren't always good.

Berries that seem to be fruitful are not always healthy. And this is what makes detecting false teachers so difficult.

They show up in places you wouldn't expect. Why would you have a deadly plant? One seed can kill a grown man.

Why would you have that in a public park? Why aren't we just surrounding that with flamethrowers? Well, because it's everywhere.

It's everywhere. And a plant that can kill you, a tree that can destroy you, might be in the most unlikely place.

It might be in the pulpit. It might be in the church down the street.

It might be in the unlikeliest of places. And it might be sweet around the edges. And it might be good to the taste. But if you swallow that teaching, if you follow that teacher wholly, it will destroy you.

It will kill you. It will kill you. Do you see? And of course,

Jesus is giving us this language of the two ways, two foundations, two kinds of profit. There's this sharp contrast.

Again, two ways to live. Paul says in Galatians 5, there's the works of the flesh. That's one way of life.

And what's the fruit of the flesh look like? He tells us adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition, dissension, heresy, envy, murder, drunkenness, revelry.

And he says, I've told you before. I'll tell you again. And I'll keep telling you. If your life is characterized with this fruit, there's only one place for you, and it's not the kingdom of heaven.

You will be cut down and thrown into the fire. These are the words of Jesus. Don't get mad at the

Bible Belt Baptist preacher. These are the words of Jesus, the Son of God.

Now what contrasts with that? If that's the fruit of the flesh, what's the contrast? The fruit of the

Spirit. It's where Paul goes in Galatians 5. Love. 2

Peter ends with the zenith of love. Paul here in Galatians 5 begins with love.

Love, joy, peace, long -suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

Two ways to live. Two trees that produce two very different kinds of fruit. There might be a sweetness around the edge, but at the end of the day, only a good tree can bear good fruit.

In the sight of God, and over the length of life, only a good tree can bear good fruit.

A bad tree can never bear the fruit that causes one to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

So for the believer, if we're growing in the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we truly have faith in the warnings and promises of God.

We truly know God, and God truly knows us. But if we're not growing in the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we should question, where are my roots lying?

What is the condition that is causing my branches to not have this kind of fruit? Am I diseased?

Am I famine? Or am I just a bad tree? And I should not rest until I can answer that question forthrightly.

The answer at any stage of that question is to repent and believe in the warning and promise of God.

You must be made a new tree. And if you were made a new tree, and it's blight and other sins that have corrupted your fruitfulness, then you ask

God to renew you, to be faithful to prune you in conviction over sin and repentance to make you fruitful again.

As that servant did, let me dig around. Let me just try to start over. Don't cut it down yet, Lord. Essentially, that's the believer's cry,

Lord, I'm fruitless. I'm barren. Don't cut me down, Lord. Don't take your spirit from me.

Make me fruitful again. I'll do whatever it takes. Dig as deep as you have to go. It's always this sharp contrast.

Scripture has this uniform testimony. You're either on the narrow path or the wide path.

You're either headed to heaven or you're headed to hell. You're either a good tree or a bad tree. You either know

God or you hate God. Everything is a sharp contrast. There's no middle ground.

We're either walking in the works of the flesh, bearing the fruit of the world, the flesh and the evil one, or we're walking in the power and presence of the

Spirit, bearing what must be born if He's indwelling our lives. It cannot be otherwise.

Let me give two points as we come to a conclusion. And the first is this.

Be aware of your unfruitfulness. Be aware of your unfruitfulness.

Don't assume it. Don't assume as Jesus was right to assume with that many leaves, there's got to be figs.

With this much activity, there's got to be fruit. With the decisions that I'm making and the things that I'm doing, of course

I'm fruitful. I don't even think about it. I don't even question it. Question it. Don't assume it.

Israel assumed it. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, the elites, the scribes, they assumed it.

They thought, are you kidding me? Who loves God more than, who's more fruitful than us?

That's why we have the trumpets on the street corner. We tied down to Mint and Dylan Kuhlman. You don't know anyone more righteous than us.

And Jesus says, you'll never bear fruit again. So become aware of your unfruitfulness.

That means you examine your days. You examine your season. We're coming to the end of the year. What has this year meant for you?

More fruit? You weigh out missed opportunities.

You weigh out failures, fumbles, stumbles. You get as intimate as you possibly can, perhaps even getting very close to the people who know you and have at least your ear enough to be honest with you.

I want to know intimately. I want to know, are there more leaves in my life than fruit?

Where is there rot? Where is there wither on my branches? I might reject it. I might hate it.

But if I love God and want to be found, planted in streams of water, I will take it to heart.

I want to know where I'm unfruitful. And if you feel fruitless, remember what we said about the godly.

Those that are the most godly often feel themselves to be far less than godly because they're so much closer to the unapproachable light of God's presence that they keep finding more wrinkles, blemishes, and stains.

The upright don't stand upright. They hang their heads low. The self -righteous puff their chest out, flex.

But the truly upright in God's eyes are the meek, the lowly. That's the ones that Jesus calls blessed at the beginning of Matthew 5.

You're hungry. You're thirsty for righteousness. Blessed are you. You're mourning.

You're yearning. Blessed are you. Persecuted. Blessed are you.

You're starving to be made right in the presence of God. You hang your head low and you beat your breasts daily like the one who goes home justified because he's crying, be merciful to me, a sinner.

That's the upright one. He goes home justified. He didn't feel that upright, did he?

He couldn't even look up to heaven. The only person who thought they were upright is the one who doesn't go home justified.

Do you see? So you feel fruitless. Well, it may be for a good reason you feel fruitless.

It may be that you feel fruitless because you are fruitless. So rather than assuaging that and saying, yeah, maybe

Ross is right. I'm really godly. Maybe you're fruitless because you have blight disease that has not been dealt with.

You haven't asked the vine dresser to dig and do all that's necessary so that you do not be cut down. You haven't actually repented of the things that are causing the fruitlessness in the first place.

That may be. But it also may be that there's some here that are feeling fruitless because they're struggling to understand how it could be that they are accepted in the beloved when they're so fruitless.

They have such little return on God's watering, on God's cultivating and fertilizing, and they feel the fruit.

They're hanging their head low, but they don't feel that they're going home justified. Maybe you feel like William Cooper who struggled with severe bouts of depression.

We sing his hymns. I wish I could say there was some glorious happy ending, and then he realized this, and it was just this great happy ending.

There's really not a happy ending with William Cooper. He lived in the house of John Newton often for months at a time unable to leave that room, unable to go to church.

Having bouts where he'd work things out and he'd be in a better frame and he'd write these glorious hymns that we sing to this day and then falling right back into that pit of despair.

In one of these bouts of depression, he wrote, one moment I thought to myself, shut out from mercy, and the next by another chapter and the next by another chapter, and I remember especially the parable of the barren fig tree was to me an inconceivable source of anguish.

I applied it to myself with a strong persuasion in my mind that when our Savior pronounced a curse upon it, He had me in His eye and was pointing that curse at me.

It's hard to examine yourself, but if your fruitlessness has brought you to the place where you're desiring to be fruitful, don't think

His eye is against you. His eye is for you. How can we be the kind of men and women that will be planted by a living stream and our leaf will never wither and will bear fruit in every season?

We've already said we're fallen. We're diseased. We're decayed. We're rotten. You can't get grapes out of the thorns of my life.

So how's that going to happen? It's the Gospel, isn't it? It meant the root of Jesse had to come and be planted.

Born under the law. The only green vine there ever was. Israel as Israel was meant to be.

Shooting out fruitfulness in every word in every interaction, in every moment, perfecting the law of God in all that He did.

And that perfectly fruitful, blessed vine was then stripped, constituted in our sin with all the blight, all of the muck, all of the filth, cast upon Him, pulling off all that fruit, all those branches, until He was nailed against a cursed tree, the dead tree, a stump of a crucifix on Calvary.

And He died in our sins so that we could be planted in His righteousness.

Do you feel fruitless? We have a glorious Savior that did not withhold

His whole life to make you fruitful. That's the answer. That's how you get planted by the streams of living water.

He plants you. He tends to you. He cultivates you. He prunes you. He gives you

His own Spirit so you won't lose heart or grow weary. He causes you to persevere. He reminds you, cling by faith to what

I've told you. Take heart my warnings. Remember my promises. Order your whole life in light of what

I've said. Have faith in Me and everything else will flow. When you feel fruitless, you'll be bearing fruit, even if it's just the fruit of repenting to Me.

In this way, you will be deeply rooted in faith, in the knowledge of the Son of God, deeply rooted in His love, and you'll be comprehending with all of the saints the depth, the height, the width of His love.

That's the only way to be fruitful. It's a changed life. You can't muster it up.

Listen, men don't gather grapes from thistles. They just don't. You can't do it.

If you could have done it, Jesus wouldn't have come and died for you. But since righteousness could not come through the law,

Christ became a curse for us, as it is written. A curse that is everyone who hangs from a tree.

And in being stripped of the perfection of fruitfulness, in our state, we are able to be made fruitful in Him.

In taking on all of our sins, and in robing Himself in all of our filth and degeneracy, we're able to be clothed in His own righteousness and made spotless as the bride of the

Lamb. When you were slaves of sin, brothers and sisters, you were free in regard to righteousness.

That was nothing to you. I just live how I want to live. Don't tell me how I'm living is wrong.

Don't point the finger at me. How dare you say that? Free in regard to righteousness. I'm a slave to sin.

I just don't know it. And Paul asks, what fruit did you have in those things?

Now you're ashamed of them. What was the fruit growing out of your life back then? Paul says, don't forget it. You were a diseased tree.

All you produced was toxic fruit. Don't forget it. The end of that was death, he says.

But now, having been set free from sin, having become slaves of God, you have fruit to holiness.

And the end of that kind of fruit, life everlasting. We don't all bear the same amount of fruit.

We don't all bear the same fruit at the same time. But if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you will be bearing fruit.

Because believers who know the Son of God abide in the Son of God. Jesus says, you can do nothing apart from me.

You want to be fruitful? Abide in the vine. So that's the first point.

Become aware of your unfruitfulness. And then the second point is, look to Christ.

Rest in Him. Conform to Him. He is the vine dresser.

He wants to do things in your life. Are you yielding to that? Are you yielding to the hard things

He's bringing you to? No one wants to be dug around at the root level. Who wants that? The only one that wants that is the one who knows the alternative is to be cut down entirely.

That's it. Get the spades and the pickaxes away.

Let me just wither over time. Only the person who says, if I don't deal with this now,

I get cut down. That's the only person who wants the vine dresser to come and is willing to yield even in the most painful things.

Look to Christ. Rest in Him. Yield to Him. Conform to Him. He's the vine dresser. He knows and is faithful to prune.

You can't say, that one hurts. Don't prune that. No, not here. No, not that. Listen, can you just take that little centimeter off and leave me alone?

Like my parents with that Japanese maple. When you invite the arborist to come, they prune until they see fit.

You trust. You trust. They know what they're doing. Well, how are you going to look to Him? How are you going to rest in Him?

How are you going to conform to Him? Let me give you two little images here.

Since we're talking about roots and fruits, and since at lunch last week, I had a great conversation with our brother

Nick, who's somewhat of an arborist himself, and it was helpful to think about trees. And it's not just the tree and the fruit that's at issue, but the soil and the light.

Good soil has good nutrients. I think we can think of soil as the church.

And I think we can think of nutrients and light as the means of grace. So how are you going to be a good and fruitful tree that can look to Christ, rest in Him, yield to Him, conform to Him?

Well, God doesn't create trees in mid -air. He plants them.

He plants them in soil. That soil needs to have nutrients, and that tree needs to be able to receive those nutrients.

And that tree also needs light, otherwise it's going to wither away. And so a good and fruitful tree needs to be planted in good soil.

It's really important. Good soil matters. Good soil matters. But good soil is not enough.

If it's in good soil, but the roots have been hardened or diseased or otherwise unable to receive the nutrients in that good soil, there's no soil on earth that can save that tree.

Those roots need to be receiving that good soil. They need to be receiving the nutrients. In other words, they need to be planted in a place, but also receiving from that place the means of grace.

Prayer, ministry of the Word, fellowship, accountability. Do you see? These are the means of grace.

These are the nutrients in the soil. It doesn't matter that you're planted here if you're not partaking. Good soil is not enough.

Bad soil would be a place where there's not enough nutrients. And it doesn't matter how good the tree is, if a good tree is in bad soil, it's going to wither away in time too, isn't it?

So as a church, and this is our corporate responsibility, we ask the question, are we good soil?

Are we the kind of soil, are we the kind of church where God can plant trees that will be fruitful?

Do we have means of grace that can be received? It may be that there's trees that are planted here and there's no fruit and it has nothing to do with the soil.

But if the whole orchard is withering, you have to question, what's going on in the soil that this could be true?

That's a perennial question for the church of God to ask. Is there something wrong with the roots of individuals or is there something wrong with the means of grace in the church?

It's got to be one or the other. It's either the roots or the soil. Bad soil does not have enough nutrients.

Or perhaps its location means there's not enough access to light. In other words, if we just think of the means of grace of God's word, you can be a tree that's earnest to grow and if you go to the soil where there's just not a lot of light, other things are there, you can certainly survive, but there's just not a lot of light.

In other words, not a lot of truth, not a lot of God's word being manifest. Well, that good tree is going to die in the shade.

Trees need light. God's people need God's word. Of course, the danger is in a church when you have a bad tree, rarely is that bad tree, if it's decaying and diseased and rotting away, a singular isolated event.

The root structure of trees, as I'm told by Kent Tree Services, are all interwoven.

They're built in symbiotically with each other. And so that disease can actually begin to affect the grove, a whole row, anything in combination with that root network.

That's a stark warning, isn't it? It's a stark warning. No wonder the vine dresser is faithful to say, why does it take up the ground?

I'm not going to risk anything else. But there's also something else in the reverse about that root structure.

A tree that's struggling, that perhaps doesn't have the best access to light or the best capability to receive nutrients from the soil will be able to receive the light and the nutrients from its root network, its connection to the other trees.

So they can all flourish together. Isn't that a beautiful image? Do I recognize that I'm rooted in with my brothers and sisters?

That they have something to receive from me even as I have something to receive from them? Or to put it in a different metaphor,

I'm just a part of the body and I don't want to be a part of the body that's on ice in a styrofoam box.

I actually want to be functioning, beating and circulating in a body. And that means that though I play one part for the whole body, the whole body also plays a certain part for me.

And if either of us goes, where's the body? This is in part, brothers and sisters, how we look to Christ, rest in Him, yield to Him, conform to Him.

When we see our fruitlessness in these respects, whether as individuals, in our homes, in our church, we don't look away from Christ, down in ourselves and say, come on thorns, give me some grapes.

Come on thistles, bear some fruit. No, we look to Him. The One who is infinitely fruitful.

The One who has the Spirit without measure. We know that He is able to do all that He has purposed.

And so we cling to Him. We follow Him. We yield to Him. We trust Him. We remember that in our flesh we're all dead and barren trees and we're planted in a broken world that's a desolate wastescape.

There's no conditions for life, but if God plants, He'll see to it. He'll see to our fruitfulness. If we yield to Him and look to Him and rest in Him, we'll find that God indeed in His time will make us fruitful.

The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, Jesus says. Unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me.

Jesus is that fruitfulness. He's the source of all light, of all life. He's the root of Jesse.

He's the root that upholds the whole living organism and the grove of the church entire.

He's the head. He's the life. He's the way. He's the truth. He's the resurrection. He's the hope of glory.

He's the one alone who's able to take us and make us like a tree planted by the rivers of water bringing forth fruit and season.

And so if we've received Christ as Jesus has told us to receive Him, to walk in Him, we will be rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith that we have in Him, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

Reminded that we didn't choose Him. We didn't plant ourselves. He chose us. He planted us.

And as He says in John 15, you didn't choose me. I appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that fruit will remain.

That whatever you ask the Father in my name, He may give you. Amen. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit. But a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit.

A bad tree cannot bear good fruit. And every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

May God help us to see our fruitlessness and the fruitful one rightly.

Let's pray. Father, thank

You for Your Word. Lord, we come to You hungry, in need of Your food, naked, in need of Your clothing, dirty, in need of Your cleansing, discouraged, in need of Your encouragement, weary, in need of Your comfort.

Fruitless, Lord, in profound ways, in dire need for You to dig deep, to water and prune, to make us fruitful as indeed

You are fruitful. Thank You that this is Your purpose, Lord. We don't have to bend

Your ear or twist Your arm. This is Your desire, Lord. It's more You that has to bend our ear to hear Your words, turn our head to see

You clearly, turn our bodies to follow You more closely. Lord, be faithful to us in these ways.

Help us not to turn to our flesh, muster things up, but to walk in step with Your Spirit who desires and is able to produce all of these things that You desire in our lives.

The faithful vinedresser, Lord, where there's difficulty, disease, rot, do the work that Your Spirit must do.

Convicting, illuminating, leading to repentance. Lord, may we not grieve the One who comes to make us fruitful. May we not quench

His activity in our lives. And Lord, be with us not just as individuals, but be with us as a church,

Lord. Are we the soil that knows how to make trees fruitful? Help us, Lord. Help each one of us to understand what it means to be trees rooted in with each other, affected by one another for good or for ill.

What it means for us to be body parts sewn together by the Spirit with You as our head. Help us,

Lord, not to be naive, not to be ignorant, not to be slow of heart to believe all that You have said and all that You have done.

And for strangers to Your grace here, Lord, for those about to be cut down, for even now the ax is laid at the root, might

You be merciful to them. Cause them to cry out as David cried out for mercy.

And cause them to have a prayer that You would make them a good tree that will bear good fruit for Your glory.

Help them to taste and see the goodness of the fruit of Christ's sacrifice. To taste the sweetness of the blood in the wine.

The goodness of the bread of His broken body that we're about to receive. To be reminded, Lord, You alone are able to make us fruitful because You were stripped bare on the tree out of love for us.