The fruitless Fig Tree

Introduction

What would you do if you knew this week was your last week on earth? If somehow you knew Friday you would draw your last breath and cross over into eternity? I’m sure we would spend time with our families, say our goodbyes, weep, pray, worry.

But not Jesus. He spent His final week on earth making a profound impact upon humanity by teaching and demonstrating Spirtual truth.

Today is known as HOLY MONDAY:

Jesus’ Monday include a cleansing of the temple where He overturned tables and drove people out with whips! Not the side of Jesus we often hear about!

After this Jesus went out and saw a fog tree and went to gather fruit from it to eat. But what He found was a tree with leaves and no fruit. He cursed the tree and it immediately withered and died.

What does all this mean? It was a demonstration of the worthlessness of fruitless religion and that is what we look at today.

We are going to look closely at the “fruitless Fig Tree” and see if we can discover its significance for our lives.

I have points I want to bring out of this text this morning: The first is negative and the second is positive:

Matthew 21:18–19 “Now in the morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, “No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.” And at once the fig tree withered.

1) Those who do not bear fruit will receive God’s judgement

Explanation:

Palm Sunday has passed. The day Jesus was celebrated as King of Israel. Yet He knows the praises of the crowds were superficial. Yes they laid the palm branches down, yes they shouted with great excitement, but Jesus knows that what was deep down inside of them was not true worship.

As he makes His way back there from Bethany, He finds a fig tree along the road and goes to get some fruit because He is hungry. The tee has leaves, it looks alive and well, and from a distance it looks as though it. should have fruit. But after a closer inspection of the tree, He finds nothing. The tree is worthless. Appealing to the eyes, but no substance, no real value in because is has no fruit at all. So Jesus curses the tree and it withers immediately.

What is the meaning of all of this? This was not Jesus being hungry and took it out on the tree! It was a picture of the entire nation of Israel. It was a picture of God’s people in those days as whole.

And by cursing this tree was demonstrate the judgement that would come upon the nation for rejecting Jesus.

Israel was like that fig tree. They had the leaves, they had everything on the outside to make them look like the people of God except for one important vital detail: THE FRUIT!

Notice what the Bible says: “He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only”

Have you ever really considered what the defining mark of a born again believer is? What is it that we can see here on earth that distinguishes us from the world and provides evidence that we truly are the people of God, that we have truly been saved, that we have been forgiven, that we are truly justified before God?

The Bible says it is the fruit in our lives that reveal our true nature.

What is fruit? How do people produce fruit or not produce fruit?

Fruit tree illustration

My wife has a small orchard in our back yard. All winter the trees are bare, no leaves, no flowers, no fruit. They all look exactly the same.

But as the weather has begun to warm up, the trees started to leaf and then flower and now they are starting the bear fruit. And instead of them all looking like apple trees, now I can tell the difference because of the fruit that they bear.

Jesus said this, Matthew 7:17“Every GOOD tree bears good fruit, but the BAD tree bears bad fruit A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then you will know them by their fruits.”

So there is good fruit and there is bad fruit. And all of us are producing one of those two kinds of fruit.

Fruit is the product of our life. It is what comes out of us that reveals what is inside of us. Just like an apple tree has apple tree DNA, eventually it will put forth apples.

Our fruit is found in things like:

What we do

What we say

How we treat others

And most importantly what we do when no one else is around.

A tree that bears good fruit will do, say, and act in ways that please God and bring Him glory.

We live according to God’s Word, according to God’s commands, according to the teachings of Jesus.

Now what happened to the fig tree that did not bear any fruit?

It was cursed by Jesus and immediately the tree withered. And this speaks of the swift and sudden judgement that would come upon the fruitless nation of Israel.

But this is also to be applied to every person’s life today. For it is not just the nation of Israel that are accountable to God, but the whole world.

No matter how much religion we have, no matter how many religious ceremonies we have participated in, if we are not producing good fruit, we are in great danger of God’s judgement.

Application

What does this mean to us? It is a call to take serious look at our live, the way we live, what we say, how we act, and evaluate the fruit that we are producing.

It is a wake up call to the world who is depending upon religion to make them something that religion was never designed to do.

It is saying to us that we can know where we stand with God, if we just evaluate the fruit in our lives.

let me give you some personal advice.

If I could go back to my 16 y/o and make myself hear and understand this message I surely would. I think this school is richly blessed to get to come to chapter once week or all week this week and hear the glorious preaching of God’s Word. My plea with you this morning, is to take a serious look at your life and be sure your fruit is good fruit.

But if I could go back to your age, I would take heed to these precious life giving words.

2) Genuine faith in Jesus produces good fruit

Matthew 21:20–22 “Seeing this, the disciples were amazed and asked, “How did the fig tree wither all at once?” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen.

“If you have faith and do not doubt”

What is faith? Faith is simply taking God at His word. It is hearing the promises, the warnings, the commands of God and believing them in such a way that they become the guiding light in our lives.

Faith is simply to believe God.

Not just to believe that God exists. It is to believe what God says!

Jesus says if you have faith, you can move mountains. He is not speaking of literal mountains, but about doing the impossible.

Now let’s think about fruit once again. Fruit is living in such a way that our lives line up with the Word of God.

And do you know how difficult that is? It is impossible! It is impossible for a person to live the Christian life by their own capabilities.

How many of you find it easy to turn the cheek when your someone slaps you on the face?

How many of you run to your friend who has done wrong to YOU to make things right with them.

How many of you are happy to overlook the things your peers have done to you!?

That’s why faith is essential for fruit. No one can truly live the Christian life with faith! None of uswill ever be able to obey God if we do not trust God! How do we trust God if we don’t believe God!? It is only when we abide in Christ, depend upon Christ, cling to Christ every single day of our lives that we begin to bear good fruit.

The entire Christian walk can be summed up in faith!

Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Without faith it is impossible to please God

It is so easy to become just like the nation of Israel was in those days.

If we have the religion, then we think we have heaven.

If we go to church, if we have the right answers, if we know the stories of the Bible, we know we are supposed to put money in the offering plate.

This is what Jesus wants of each of you right now: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” (John 6:29)

What God wants from you first is to trust Him.

What does that look like to trust God?

Trust Him to remain pure until you get married. We live in a culture that is predominantly against sexual purity. But God’s word says, “the marriage bed is to be undefined”.

Do not cave into the pressure around you. God’s call on your life is to remain pure until you have joined another in marriage.

And if you do that, statistics show you will have a far more blessed marriage than those who refuse to wait.

Trust Him with your future

It is impossible to follow Christ if we are leading ourselves. Jesus said, “come take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart.”

where He wants you to go to college, what profession He wants you to be in,

Stay deeply connected to the church

It is a dangerous thing to drift into the idea that Christians do not need the church. Without the church we will be just like that fig tree, that will wither and die.

The church is our people. It is the place where God’s people come together to form this supernatural body of believers who desperately need one another.

And your temptation when you are set free from your homes, or enter into adulthood, or even over this summer is going to be to drift out of attending regularly.

I was about 14 years old when I stopped attending church. Had grown up in it my whole life. It was not until I stopped going, that I started living a very sinful and rebellious life.

Church is not an option, it is essential for fruit. The preaching of the Word of God is essential for producing fruit. The community of believers is essential for bearing fruit. You stay deeply connected, and by staying connected you will stay connected to Christ. ~PRAYER~