Tree of a Kind

Notes
Transcript

Luke 6:43-45

Luke 6:43–45 ESV
“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
Pray
Introduction:
Bethany and I got married on August 19 of the year 2000. We were both still in college, but I only had one semester left. Now, as it would happen, I had saved both of my science credits for the final semester. So for a few months, beginning about ten days after we got married, I had to wake up for class Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. I had General Botany at 8AM followed by Earth Science at 9. It was a bit grueling. Suprisingly, I remember liking botany more than Earth Science. If you don’t know, botany is the science of plant life. I had to turn in a leaf collection as the main project. Well, you don’t need to have studied botany (thankfully) to understand the agricultural illustration that Jesus uses in today’s passage.
We are coming to the end of the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6, with just one more message to go after today. There is a common pitfall when reading through passages like the Sermon on the Plain that it’s easy to fall into but that we want to avoid. There is a temptation to read the things in this chapter and believe that the application of it is for you to become a “do more, try harder,” type of Christian. We see what Jesus taught to His followers and we sometimes get the idea that we need to simply modify our behavior and that will solve everything and make us more like Jesus. We believe we can make our insides right by changing our outsides. But that’s not how this works and that is simply not what Jesus is saying here.
This final section of Jesus’ teaching is connected but for the sake of spending time in each section we are going to split it into two sections and cover them individually and then showing how they are connected and go together. Today we’ll cover verses 43 through 45 and next week verses 46 through 49.
The main idea for today’s passage is: What we see on the outside tells us what is on the inside.
I am going to cover this idea in three main points. First we will look at the characteristics of the trees, the produce of each of those trees, and finally I’m going to look at the root of the fruit.
Context of the SOTP
In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus had just called out and chosen the twelve Apostles from among his other followers and both groups are there as Jesus teaches. The things He is laying out are basically what it looks like to follow Him. What are the attitudes what does the heart look like of someone who belongs to Him. That matters for how we look at sections of the sermon like the Beatitudes.

I. The characteristics of trees

The world says, “You can’t know a person’s heart.” Many well meaning Christians will say the same thing.
We can’t see someone’s heart but that doesn’t mean that a person’s heart will not reveal itself outwardly.
Many trees look alike if you only look at their branches and take a cursory glance at the way their leaves grow.
But if you don’t know what kind of tree it is, you might eat it thinking it’s healthy and find out the hard way that it’s poisonous.
My good friend Tim once told me about going to the refrigerator and finding a big ole bowl of cookie dough. He was so excited to eat it so he got a spoon and took a big bite of it… and… it turned out that it was mashed potatoes. Now mashed potatoes are good but not when your taste buds are watering and thinking they’re getting cookie dough. On the outside they looked the same but the taste or what was on the inside was quite different. If Tim had tossed them in the microwave, the heat would have made the differences very apparent. It would give off a different smell and it would act different as you watch it cook.
So on the outside trees may look similar with a cursory glance. But if you want to know what kind of tree you’ve got, you have to inspect the fruit.
Trees bear fruit in keeping with their kind.
An apple tree produces apples. A pear tree produces pears. You would not go to a banana tree and expect to find avocados. If you saw avocados, you would know that this was not a banana tree but in fact was an avocado tree.
What Jesus is pointing out here: We are all like trees. We will produce fruit that is either good or bad.
The fruit producing that he is talking about here is not a one time occurrence but a continual harvest of the course of life being that this tree produces a type of fruit, whether good or bad, and that fruit telling us what type of tree we have on our hands, or what type of person we have on our hands.
If the type of fruit produced by the tree tells us about the type of tree then we need to spend some time talking about the produce of the trees.

II. The produce of trees

There is a direct correlation between the quality of the tree and the type of fruit that it produces. It’s a one to one connection. A good tree won’t produce bad fruit and a bad tree won’t produce good fruit. If people are like trees and the fruit we produce tells us about ourselves then it makes sense to ask what bad fruit and good fruit are? What do they look like? I’m glad you asked. I have verses.
-Fruit of a bad tree (from a bad heart)
Works of the flesh
Galatians 5:19–21 ESV
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
-Fruit of a good tree(good heart)
Fruit of the Spirit Gal 5: 22-24
Galatians 5:22–24 ESV
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
- THOUGH fruit is not a certain indicator, it is surely a suggestive indicator. It is possible that a Christian may have fallen into some sin and we see the fruit of that in their lives for a time. That is certainly an indicator that something is wrong but doesn’t certainly mean that the person is not a Christian. We need to look at the trajectory of their life and what we are going to look at in a few minutes is the root of where all of this comes from. But when we see good fruit over the course of someone’s life we can know that it comes from a good heart. Likewise, when we see a course of life producing bad fruit we can know that it comes from a bad heart.
Some of you may hear me use the words good heart and bad heart and wonder what I mean by that. Or better yet, what Jesus means by that. Doesn’t scripture say some things about the heart of man that are not very flattering. Yes, it certainly does.
Jeremiah 17:9 ESV
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
You may have heard someone tell you to just “follow your heart.” This is terrible advice! Your heart is sinful and corrupted by your sin nature. You will follow your heart right into sin and hell if that is how you live your life from the time you are born. So if the heart is deceitful, how can we have a good heart that produces good fruit?
The answer is, we need to be given a new heart.
That brings us to the root of where the fruit in our lives comes from.

III. The root of the fruit

Take a look back at verse 45.
Luke 6:45 ESV
The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
- What we treasure in our heart will determine the fruit that is produced by our lives.
- Good trees will bear good fruit. Christians, those regenerated by the work of the Spirit through the Gospel of Jesus Christ will bear some sort of fruit. If there is no fruit in your life, and I would say a noticeable abscence of love to be specific, then there is reason to be concerned and question.
Romans 8:1–16 ESV
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
1 John 3:1–9 ESV
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.
Anabwele says that "The invisible things of the heart are revealed by the visible actions and audible words of a person."
What do your actions reveal about your heart?
What do your words reveal about your heart?
Our words and actions are like an x-ray, showing what is really going on inside.
Our actions will play out of the motivations and loves that are in our heart.
Not a one time happening but the habit of a person's life.
Is it sin or righteousness that is the habit of the heart?
Why do we do what we do?
We do what we do because we want what we want because we worship what we worship.
TRESURE in your heart
A heart change is needed.
J. C. Ryle said:
“Let it be a settled principle again in our religion, that when a man’s general conversation is ungodly, his heart is graceless and unconverted. Let us not give way to the vulgar notion, that … although men are living wickedly, they have got good hearts at the bottom. Such notions are flatly contradictory to our Lord’s teaching. Is the general tone of a man’s communication carnal, worldly, irreligious, godless, or profane? Then let us understand that this is the state of his heart. When a man’s tongue is generally wrong, it is absurd, no less than unscriptural, to say that his heart is right.”
If we try to live out Jesus’ commands apart from a heart that is totally captured by His grace, it won’t work. WE must be captivated by it. What happens to most of us is that we get a little bud of fruit growing and we become content with it.
Paul Trip writes,
“If a tree produces bad apples year after year, there is something drastically wrong with its system, down to its very roots. I won’t solve the problem by stapling new apples onto the branches. They also will rot because they are not attached to a life-giving root system. And next spring, I will have the same problem again. I will not see a new crop of healthy apples because my solution has not gone to the heart of the problem. If the tree’s roots remain unchanged, it will never produce good apples. The point is that, in personal ministry, much of what we do to produce growth and change in ourselves and others is little more than ‘fruit stapling.’ It attempts to exchange apples for apples without examining the heart, the root behind the behavior.” - Paul Trip
This is the problem with a lot of preaching and in a lot of lives.
Let me give you a some challenges to take with you this week and dwell on as you pray:
Challenge to Graduates:
To our graduates about to venture out into the world: The world will challenge your fruit production. They're going to tempt you with desires that are going to touch on what your flesh is warrring at inside you. You will be tempted to forsake your faith for the acceptance of the world.
The fruit that your life produces can either work to minister to others out of a heart devoted to Jesus and His gospel or it will produce fruit showing where your affections truly lie. So, young men, find your treasure in the gospel. Find your treasure and worth and value, not in what the world says but in Jesus Christ. He will, by His Spirit, produce good fruit in your life if you are firmly rooted in the eternal truth of the gospel.
Challenge to Church:
Be rooted in Jesus. Be captivated by Jesus and His Word. Let that be where the nourishment for fruit production in your life comes from. Be a church defined not by what we do but by where our treasure is found.
Challenge to individual Christians:
Examine yourselves to see if you’re in the faith.
2 Corinthians 13:5 ESV
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!
Do what builds your affections for Christ.
Avoid what steals your affections from Christ.
Be rooted in the gospel.
Be planted in the Word of God.
Stay connected in prayer and fellowship.
Listen to this Christian: Even after we have come to Christ and started following Jesus, any sin issues that we still deal with are heart issues. If you are struggling with sin, ask God to do His heart-changing work in us by His grace. He does this work through the power of the Holy Spirit. Changing your behavior is not enough. There needs to be a house cleaning on the inside. The change that is real and lasts begins in the heart. It means you need to repent of your evil desires. You must put to death your self love and love of worldly things.
Ask God to replace those sinful desires with affection for Him and His holiness. With your heart in the right place you can grow good fruit. This good spiritual fruit ONLY comes from a new heart.
Grow in Jesus - Listen to Him. The Spirit will produce fruit in you.
Challenge to Non-Christians:
Accept the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.
Get a new heart of flesh to replace your heart of stone.
Get a heart that yearns for the things of God instead of things of the flesh and of this world.
Point to next week’s passage as Jesus sharpening this point even further as He continues to speak. He also shows us what the outcome of having a heart not completely His looks like. I hope you will come back and join us at Hope.
PRAY
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