The Importance of Bearing Good Fruit 9/17

Bearing Good Fruit

Dr. Larry Thorson
September 14, 2008

The Scripture story today starts out in the Jordan River where John the Baptist was calling people to turn from their sins and prepare for the coming of God’s Messiah or Savior by being baptized. We read in Matthew 3:7-10…

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Those were pretty harsh words. Fruit bearing trees have two purposes…one is to feed others, and the other is to reproduce. They’re not meant to be shade trees. Followers of Christ have two purposes. One is to spiritually feed others and the other is to reproduce other followers of Christ. We weren’t designed to shade people from the hot place.

Think about a pear, how when we eat it our bodies are nourished. We enjoy its sweetness. Then we throw the core away because we don’t have any use for it. But the core actually serves an important purpose which is to produce more pear trees. In God’s creation design, the pit represents the future. Everything in God’s creation including the faith is designed to be passed on.

Recently my wife talked to a woman who visited a church out of this area for three weeks. The church building was attractive. She liked the pastor. But the congregation was self-absorbed, they couldn’t bring themselves to include the visitor. They’d be all hugging each other but wouldn’t pay any attention to her. They were throwing their future away. They weren’t reproducing. Not surprising that church was shrinking.

Sometime back in a different congregation, a new person visited a church. The first person she talked to introduced her to another, and that one introduced her to another, and before she left that day she had joined the choir. The practice of introducing visitors to several different church members is what I would call bearing good fruit. But not everybody and every church produce the same kind of fruit.

In Matthew 7:16-21 Jesus said “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. 21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven.

A grape vine will produce grapes. A fig tree will produce figs. There is a hint of we are what we are. Some of us are grapes, others are figs…some teachers, some care givers, some organizers, some leaders, some helpers. A fig tree is not supposed to produce grapes and there’s nothing better or worse about being either a fig or a grape.

But as we continue through the paragraph, the contrast Jesus is dealing with is not whether we’re figs or grapes, (teachers, care-givers or organizers) but whether the fruit produced is good or bad. The point of fruit is in the nutritional food value of the product and in its ability to reproduce. The point of followers of Christ is that we become more like Christ and reproducing new believers. We exist to spiritually feed others. If we stop feeding others, or the food we give them is no good, John says we’re to be thrown out. That’s harsh but hey he was God’s prophet and that’s what he was told to say.

Now this is not saying that if you are wounded, you have to produce or get out. Jesus healed the wounded and comforted the broken hearted. He wasn’t fussing at the people in pain. He says if you say you’ve repented, let’s see it. If you’re no longer stealing from others, start giving. If you’re trying to stop criticizing, try encouraging.

Many of us grow up not even realizing that some of our actions are wrong. If we grew up with pride and prejudice, arrogance is going to be second nature for us. If we grew up with criticism, negativity will flow naturally from our mouths.

As we are adopted by God, we surrender our natural tendencies, saying to God, fill me with your Holy Spirit, speak through me, and work through me. God will do the part of healing and transforming; our role is to be the gatekeeper of what comes out of our mouths and what our hands and feet do. The result will provide spiritual food for the people we are around and the seed of faith for the future because people will see the work of the Spirit in our lives just like if we eat healthily it becomes evident in our physical bodies..

God gives us what we need to produce good fruit if we’ll take it. Just like we’re encouraged to eat five fruits and vegetables every day so there are five fruitful practices for us as a congregation that we need to produce. We’ll be looking at those in the coming weeks to see how this church matches up as a fruitful congregation.

We may think as we hear this that the work comes in knowing what to say and when to say it, or what to do and when to do it. Those are the external issues, the fruit that we see. But the quality of the fruit production comes not at the last minute; it comes in the overall health of the plant. We have to put our roots down deeper, seeking out the life giving water. We have to submit to pruning during the winter months, asking God to trim off what is unnecessary, being willing to be trimmed way back and that hurts! This means finding or making quiet moments with God to process whatever bitterness or resentment have taken root in our lives. It usually means finding someone to talk to for the support in that cleansing process. We must seek to feed our own souls by drinking deeply at the river of life that flows from the heart of God…and then the good fruit will come.

This is aptly illustrated by William Boggs, in his book, Sin Boldly: but Trust God More Boldly Still. He describes how we can acquire what it is that we need. He writes: "One hot Carolina afternoon, on a visit home, my family and I were driving along when we passed an orchard of peaches that advertised especially low prices if we were only willing to pick them ourselves. "I doubt that any bargain would be sufficiently attractive to me now to lure me out of my air-conditioned car and into a steamy afternoon to pick peaches, but we were younger then, poorer then and in less of a hurry than we tend to be these days. "So we pulled over, paid our money, and selected a bushel basket to fill with fresh, ripe Spartanburg peaches. "As we set off into the orchard, an old fellow, as wrinkled as a peach pit and who was tending the place, said, 'If you want the best fruit, go deeper into the orchard; the peaches along the fringes are picked over, but deeper into the orchard, you'll find the best fruit.'

"We walked a way, far enough along that I figured we had gone past the picked-over sections.

"But just as we set the basket down, he hollered, 'Go deeper.'

"So we picked up the basket, went a little farther, set the basket down, and again we heard him shouting his advice, 'Go deeper. The best fruit's farther in.'

"Once more we picked up the basket and walked along, finally deciding that surely we were now deep enough, but once more as we prepared to pick the peaches, he hollered, 'Go on. Go deeper.'

"This time we went a substantially longer distance, and discovered that indeed he was right.

"The finest, plumpest peaches were untouched and waiting for us".

So many people pick around the edges of God's peach or apple orchard. The fruit is good but there is still more fruit to be picked and enjoyed; fruit which nourishes the soul and the spirit. Fruit that is the productive result of Christian discipline. Go deeper. Go deeper

Don’t worry about the physiological explanation for all of this. Just receive God’s Holy Spirit. Produce fruit, good fruit. Don’t worry about being too old. Last Sunday many from my senior adult group in Plano came out just to support the new church and give it big send off. Some of them were really too feeble to come but they wanted to prove you’re never too old to produce fruit.

Don’t worry about being too old poor or too poor or too busy. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ you need to be producing good fruit in your life and reproducing your spiritual life in someone else’s life. If you’re not a follower of Jesus Christ you’re missing out on the greatest opportunity afforded human beings. Open your heart today and ask Jesus to come into your life and forgive you of your sins. Then go out with the rest of the believers producing good fruit and inviting someone else to meet your Savior. Amen.