When Bitter Apples Become Sweet

An orchard farmer plants an apple tree, a peach tree, and a pear tree all in close proximity to one another. They are, of course, different but they all have been planted by the skilled farmer and they all have the same purpose. The apple is supposed to be the best tasting apple that he can be—and used for whatever purpose. Same with the peach and the pear.

The goal is that when you bite into this apple it’s so delicious that someone says, “where’d you get that apple”. It’s supposed to reflect back upon the orchard farmer. They are delicious because the farmer is a skilled farmer. It is because of him that they have their identity. “This must be one of Farmer John’s apples.” If that happens then the apple has done his job.

Now, one particular day a visitor comes to the orchard and skips over the apple tree and pulls a delicious peach off the tree. He tastes the peach and exclaims, “This is such a good peach. Farmer John, give me a whole bag of these peaches”. At this the apples lose their red color and begin to turn an envious green. This a reflection of the envious and bitter root of the apple tree. He developed a deep grudge and also a plan to destroy the peach.

Now whenever a passerby would come the apple would work hard to disguise his bitterness and his rotting fruit. But at this point his focus was no longer on whether or not someone enjoyed his apples—rather his focus was on making sure that others didn’t enjoy the peach tree. So when someone would walk by the apple tree, he’d begin to focus on all the imperfections of the peach. And if they weren’t readily visible he would make something up. Over time his words worked into the soil and began to corrupt even the peach. The squabbles between the peach and the apple destroyed the fruit of both of them.

Now each passerby had only one option—the pear. But we all know that it would not take long for Mr. Pear to be destroyed as well. With the apple and the peach now united in their condemnation of the pear, it wouldn’t be long before the nasties impacted his roots as well.

Within a short time the business to Farmer John’s orchard withered. Who wants to go to an orchard filled with rotten fruit? The reputation of Farmer John was being tarnished. What kind of farmer is this who plants such nasty trees? He had only one viable option. He had to plant new seed. These trees had to be made anew.

And this he did. This time he planted with an imperishable seed—seed which was living and abiding and would last forever. Seed which somehow came from Farmer John’s very being. And now, having been purified, they would accurately reflect the glory of Farmer John. The whole town could now taste and see that Farmer John was the best farmer.

Now when folks came to the orchard it was a joyous occasion. Walking by the apple tree they’d hear things like, “Have you tried a peach today! He’s looking pretty peachy!” Have you tried the pear? They were now working to outdo one another in love. The apple tree was no longer about apples—he was all-in on making sure folks could taste and see that Farmer John was good. It didn’t matter if that joy came from a peach, a pear, or an apple.

Read 1 Peter 1:22-2:3

So what Peter is doing in this passage is something similar to what I attempted to do with my little story of the trees. Underneath of these verses is a theology—a story—about humanity. We were created to reflect God—to enjoy Him and to extend His glory—but we made shipwreck of this. And our problem isn’t just an issue of bitter fruits it goes all the way down to the root system.

And you likely feel or experience this every single day. Not a one of us will be immune from heartbreak nor will we be kept from breaking the hearts of others. Our relationships can bring us seasons of great joy and some of the deepest and most profound heartache.

You’ve been slandered against and you’ve slandered others. In your anger you’ve sinned against others and you’ve had them sin against you. We’ve been treated poorly and we’ve fallen into treating others poorly. Said mean things, heard mean things, we’ve been rejected, we’ve rejected—gossiped and been gossiped about. You get the picture. Some of us might feel the weight of our own sin—others might feel more deeply the wait of sin against us.

Miscommunication. Avoiding conflict out of fear. Anger. Defensiveness. Gossip. Lying. Envy. Lust. Isolation to avoid hurt. Smothering to avoid loneliness. Superficiality. Argumentative. Controlling. Hurt feelings.Betrayal.

Where do all these nasty and painful fruits come from? It actually goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Our struggles are not new. They just wear new clothes. In our story of the fruit trees, the experience of Mr. Apple actually goes all the way back to the garden.

Adam and Eve were planted in the Garden to reflect the glory of God. They were supposed to shine his greatness. But they turned inward and sin did what it always does. It makes shipwreck of our own hearts and then turns the damage outward to others. This is why you’ve got murder in the first set of siblings.

There is a word in this passage, verse 23, that is rich with bible story. That word translated “seed” here is actually about the act of sowing. This is the only use in the NT in this form. It’s kind of a euphemism for procreating. But the root form of this word goes all the way back to the Garden and to the Fall. After they ate of the forbidden fruit and then God shows up he pronounces a curse upon the serpent and in that curse he says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring (seed) and her offspring (seed).

And this begins this great story which plays out throughout the Scriptures. Are you born of God or are you born of Adam? Are you a child of God or a child of man? Are you of the seed of the woman or the seed of the serpent?

If you’ve only been born of perishable seed then your story is going to play out like those fruit trees, time and time again. You’ll have sunny days when it seems like things are great and the fruits aren’t rotten and you’re getting all of your dreams to come true—but when the sun begins to shine and the heat of the day bears down upon you—and you start to get cranky and the strength of your roots are exposed—then all those nasty things like bitterness and self-preservation are going to come out. Left to ourselves humanity isn’t going to sow—we aren’t going to procreate—love. We’re going to spread our own fallen image. We’ll be like Mr. Apple—I want people to love apples.

But the gospel—the God of the gospel—creates love. That’s the other story being told. And that’s what Peter is saying here in this text. There’s another story.

Look at verse 22...

having purified your souls. That’s a perfect tense. It means it’s something that has already happened and it has ongoing consequences. And this has happened at conversion. That is what “obedience to the truth” is referring to. It means turning to Christ in repentance and faith. Being born again.

And we’re born again into something…notice what the text says, “for a sincere brotherly love”. The purpose for which they were converted was to reflect love. You were born again—because you were putting out bitter and nasty fruit which was destroying you, destroying community, and greatest of all reflecting poorly upon your Maker. And so the Maker gave you a new root system which is “for a sincere brotherly love.”

Sincere. That means legit, real, not hypocritical. Do you think that part of the apple trees strategy might have been to look as much like the beloved Farmer John BUT to do so not in order to bring glory to Farmer John but to the apple himself? You see our goal here isn’t to “look loving” it’s to actually truly love one another. To want what is best for them in Jesus.

One of the things that I was told in college and in being trained in youth ministry is a really good maxim. They don’t care how much you know unless they know how much you care. It’s helpful and certainly true. But what happened with me early on is that I worked really hard to make sure that people knew I loved them—and I maybe didn’t do the greatest of job of actually loving them.

And that’s easy isn’t it. To love people as an idea—to have the idea of loving folks or even to what to be seen as loving—but to actually love someone…that’s much more difficult. That’s why I’ve always loved, and been convicted by these words by Mark Dever:

If your goal is to love all Christians, let me suggest working toward it by first committing to a group of real Christians with all their foibles and follies. Commit to them through thick and thin for eighty years. Then come back and we’ll talk about your progress in loving all Christians everywhere.

I think what Dever is saying here is important because it cuts through the smoke and the insincerity that we sometimes have. We talk about love as a concept—we use it as a word that has almost lost all meaning. And that makes it so much easier. It’s easier to talk about loving people and to make it a lofty concept. It’s quite another to actually truly from the heart really love other people. That takes a work of grace.

Faking love is something a bitter old apple tree could do. But actually cheering on the success—the increase of the peach tree to it’s own decrease—well that’s something entirely different.

Peter goes on then with the imperative—the “do this”. Love one another earnestly from a pure heart. That word earnestly is an interesting one. To get a picture of it it’s the same word used of the prayer of the king of Nineveh when he repents in sackcloth and ashes in the hopes that God will give mercy. It’s a coming from the gut type of thing. Or another picture is of Jesus in the Garden sweating drops of blood due to his earnest prayer.

This love is a deep type of thing. It’s not a cold and calculated thing. It comes out of the depth of your being. I actually like the way Eugene Peterson in The Message translates this: “love one another as if your lives depended on it.” That gets at the sense of it.

I don’t care how “spiritual” you are or how much you are “growing in the word” or how much you are “solid” in your theology IF we aren’t growing in deeper love for our fellow believers then it’s a sham.

Again I turn to Dever:

We demonstrate to the world that we have been changed, not primarily because we memorize Bible verses, pray before meals, tithe a portion of our income, and listen to Christian radio stations, but because we increasingly show a willingness to put up with, to forgive, and even to love a bunch of fellow sinners.

We have been given a phenomenal opportunity with this Coronavirus to live out these verses. In a church body our size, we naturally have a spectrum of differing views regarding closing and reopening and the virus in general. So what do you do with those differences?

I think there is one school of thought which thinks that if you really love me then you are going to agree with me on everything. But the truth is that God has created as unique. We have different personalities and we have different life experiences. We’re also at different places in our lives and in our walk with Christ. When you put all of this together you’re going to see even the strongest of followers of Jesus having a difference of opinion. Look at Paul and Barnabas. Look at the early disciples. But their differences of opinion and such actually propelled them into deeper love.

These differences give us a unique and powerful opportunity to display the gospel in how we love one another. We have the privilege to “count others as more significant than ourselves” (Phil. 2:3) and to “love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10). We can and should use this as an opportunity to glorify our Lord Jesus Christ by accommodating one another. And we should do this cheerfully.

You see if we take the path which Mr. Apple took in our little parable then we’ll use opportunities like this to further our own agendas. We’ll try to bring everyone into conformity to our way of thinking. But love calls us to do something much different. And that’s what Peter is saying in this passage. We’ve been born again by the “living and abiding word of God”.

If you are in Christ then you have a different life principle within you. It’s one that’s not fundamentally about you—but it’s about others. It moves outward. This is why you see what you do in 2:1. Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander. Put away ALL of those, the text says. Why? Because they don’t belong to your new way of living. You’ve been born anew, says Peter, so live like it.

When you think of the stuff that could destroy love and absolutely demolish a local church body what are some of the things that you think of? I think for many of us when we think about sin we tend to go towards the really bad stuff of paganism—we think of things like sexual immorality and other forms of ungodly living. And those do matter. But I find it really interesting that as Peter is talking about holiness and such that what he focuses on are these community destroying vices which we so often turn a blind eye towards.

I like how one commentator summarizes these:

Malice and envy readily lead to deceit and slander. The envious want to bring other people down; they will slander or malign others to do so. Deceit, like malice, is a wide-ranging vice. It includes all dishonesty, whether in words or deeds. Yet deceit and slander are both primarily sins of the tongue. When we deceive, we shade the truth, ordinarily to someone’s face. Slander is bald opposition to the truth, ordinarily behind someone’s back. The deceiver hides the truth. The gossip sometimes tells the truth, but delivers it to the wrong people. The slanderer boldly lies, pretending to deliver the truth.

The gospel drives all of this out. That is Peter’s point here. The Word of God creates love, you have been born again by the Word of God & you have tasted that the Lord is good—therefore, drive out the old man which destroys love AND grow up into salvation by loving one another deeply. So in this passage there is something which God has already decisively done—gave believers new life but there is also something which we are to continue doing— “grow up” as we crave pure spiritual milk. As we continue in the Word—as we continue applying the gospel to our hearts and our lives then it changes things.

It’s simple really. If you are a believer in Jesus this is the plea.

You know that the Lord is good, right? You’ve tasted the sweetness of the LORD. You know what it’s like to live and walk in forgiveness and love and peace. You’ve experienced the inexpressible joy of life according to the fruit of the Spirit. Let me ask it this way:

Do you want a life that is marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Or one that is marked by sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and such things?

Forget about others for a moment. Forget about what so and so has done to you. Just drop all the excuses and the what-ifs just for a second. If you could have a life marked by love, joy, and peace or a life marked by lust, rage, and broken relationships? Which one do you want? I realize that I’m oversimplifying this just a little bit—but what Peter is telling his audience (that includes us) is that you have been born again by the living word of God. The imperishable word of God. Love, joy, peace, and all of these fruit of the Spirit has been purchased for you. Which one do you want on your tree?

Friend, that’s not determined by whether or not you have heat in your life. It’s not fundamentally about the environment around you. It’s about whether or not you and I are laboring to put off that old way of living and to put on this new life in Christ. You’ll never regret choosing love. I’ll just leave that there.

If you don’t know Christ then I want us to close by looking at this quotation here from Isaiah 40. All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls...

Let that sink in for just a moment. What this means is that there are things which are going to die. There are glorious and beautiful and wonderful things in this life. There are great gifts of God. And there are also those really painful and horrible things. If your hope is in “flesh” or in the glory of this world then it’s going to whither. You know that don’t you. Why can’t things just seem to work out. You strive and you strive. You labor and you toil. If only this thing comes together then I’m going to finally have life. But you see those things—those things of grass—things of the flesh—they have within them a death principle—a perishable principle—a diminishing principle. They cannot ultimately fill you up. And so it never works out the way you think it’s going to. It never satisfies. You taste and see that this thing is good or that thing is good and you want more but it never satisfies that thirst or that hunger. But not only that it eventually turns bitter.

Isaiah 40 is spoken to an exiled people. People who are hurting and disappointed. They are watching as their enemies are thriving. Their world isn’t going the way they envisioned. So what do you do in that moment…buckle down and say, “I’m going to make it happen. I’m going to grab a hold of the world I want to create for myself”? That’d be the way of grass—the way of the flesh—and that’s what Peter is pointing to by quoting this. Those people who are persecuting you—the story here isn’t that you need to find a way to get back in power. The story is that their playing a game that you don’t even want to be a part of. Their playing a game of seeing who can stack the most blades of grass in a windstorm. It’s dumb.

All flesh is like grass...

But the word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that was preached to you. What’s that good news? That in Christ all is being redeemed. If you are “in Christ” in a relationship with Him then all that He has is yours. His record becomes yours. Your guilt is taken upon His shoulders. That’s the good news. He’s bringing shalom—he’s bringing peace.

And so that question hangs over you this morning. What do you want? Do you want a life of dandelions. You know those don’t you. You pick them. Pretty flower. Give them to your mother. Put them in a pretty vase. Then about 3 hours later it looks just like an ugly shriveled up weed in a glass of water. Do you want your life built upon that? Or do you want your life built upon Christ?

Bitter, indeed, the waters are Which in this desert flow; Though to the eye they promise fair, They taste of sin and woe.

2 Of pleasing draughts I once could dream, But now, awake, I find, That sin has poisoned every stream, And left a curse behind.

3 But there’s a wonder-working wood, I’ve heard believers say, Can make these bitter waters good, And take the curse away.

4 The virtues of this healing tree Are known and prized by few; Reveal this secret, Lord, to me, That I may prize it too.

5 The cross on which the Savior died, And conquered for His saints; This is the tree, by faith applied, Which sweetens all complaints.

6 Thousands have found the blest effect, Nor longer mourn their lot; While on His sorrows they reflect, Their own are all forgot.

7 When they, by faith, behold the cross, Tho’ many griefs they meet; They draw again from every loss, And find the bitter sweet.