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Comparing our walk with God to gardening and fruitfulness is a common theme in scripture. We quickly learn that we "reap what we sow" and that the Word of the Lord is like a "seed" that must fall upon "good ground" in our lives. We learn that our faith is "as the grain of mustard seed" which although it may appear small, it has the power if activated and planted within our lives to become a large and well-rooted tree of stability in our lives! We learn from the first psalm that a man who trusts in the Lord and avoids acting like the ungodly will be "like a tree:"

And so through a basic understanding of the seasons and fruit, we can understand that by making our habitation in God, that we are setting ourselves up for success in the Spirit and a life that has reaped bad things can now begin to reap the blessings of the kindgom of God!

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In scripture, there are two particular plants that God uses over and over again to refer to the person that has been born again and is living for Him: the fig tree, and the grape vine. Throughout the Old Testament through such prophets as Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Hahum God compared His people Israel to fig trees and grave vines. When they were putting forth good fruits they were "goodly figs" and when they were following after idols and going away from God, they were "vile figs." Likewise God compared the Promised Land to a "vineyard" and when Israel went astray they were said to have brought forth "wild grapes." Throughout the New Testament Jesus used these same two plants to teach about the born-again believer of the New Covenant of Grace. And His brother, James, compared both the fig tree and the grape vine to the Early Apostolic Church in his hard-hitting epistle.

That God chose these two plants to represent humanity is very fitting. Since the beginning of the year, I have been reading the sermons of the early American, "hell and brimstone" preacher, Jonathan Edwards. In his fiery sermon "Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only" Edwards talks about how fitting a comparison it is for God to compare us to vines, and I quote:

Edward's text in that sermon is from Ezekiel and I would like to read it and sum up his main point:

In other words, God is asking "what good is the 'tree' part of the vine it's use in nature?" The same can be said for the fig tree. The vine and the fig tree branch are created for essentially two purposes: to bear fruit, and through that fruit, to reproduce. Other than that what is it good for? When we look at a pine tree, we can realize that usefulness and created purpose of the tree is found in it's wood. Pinecones are not that useful to man but milled lumber is very much so! We could say the same for many other plant species, but when it comes to a fig tree and a grape vine, the wood itself is not fit for building anything; it is created for one purpose and one purpose only: to support and bear fruit. And if the fig tree and the grape vine does not bear fruit, God spoke to us in Ezekiel that there is only one other thing to be done with it: "it is cast into the fire for fuel!"

What a sobering thought! And what a hard saying taught by God's Word: that if what is created only to be fruitful for God is not, then it becomes worthless! And yet in scripture we find Jesus repeating the theme in regards to both the fig tree and the vine.

It was the last week of Jesus' life when He hungrily came upon a fig tree bearing leaves. In Israel the fig blossoms and fruit appear before the leaves so that a tree with leaves is usually proof that a tree has fruit. As the leaves grow, they cover the fruit so that one must be right upon the tree to actually see the figs, and as Jesus got closer to the tree He discovered that something was wrong with this particular tree because it's leaves showed that it had been growing long enough to produce fruit and yet it was barren. The scriptures record these sobering words spoken by our Lord:

What a strange reaction until you realize that Jesus never commanded His disciples that they would curse fig trees. He was not acting in the role of man but of God in this particular case. And as God, He had provided everything that the fig tree needed to produce fruit: He created the world with it's soil and nutrients. He created the fig tree that grows and blossoms. He created the rain that had watered the seed and the sun that shone down to spur the process of photosynthesis. And Jesus had caused this plant to have ample enough water and sunlight to grow to a place where it should have born fruit. It was large enough; and it even had the leaves to prove that it was alive and yet there was not fruit! And so when the plant's creator came to reap the reward of the work that He had begun in this plant's life, and yet there was not fruit, then He had every right to curse it! He had every right to cause it to wither up because without fruit, it is good for nothing else but the fire! It is only taking up nutrients and space that could be given to another that would produce fruit for it's Creator!

I'm preaching to you and I that God has not come into your life and placed you within His vineyard and allowed you to receive His blessings just to take up space! He saved you because He loved you but because He also had a plan for your life! Salvation and being "born again" is not to be just a one time experience that somebody has one Sunday and then just live like they want to live! But when God washed your sins away and fills you with His Spirit, He has taken a "wild vine" and engrafted it into the true vine, Jesus Christ! He has taken a tree that was only capable of producing "vile figs" and works of the flesh and replanted it into His vineyard and giving it everything that it needs to produce precious fruit for Him! We have been given the "sunlight" of truth shining in our hearts and minds and we no longer have to dwell in darkness! We have experienced the steady rain of the Holy Ghost not only drenching us with His Spirit but creating a well within our souls that never runs dry! We experience the vitamins and pruning of His Word each week and are given a "husbandmen" or an "overseer" to watch and care for your spiritual health! There is a wall protecting you from having to bear the full brunt of the storms of life by yourself and the husbandmen stays on duty praying and fasting for your souls and trying to chase away "the small foxes" or the small things that would destroy your relationship with God.

Like Israel, we stand in a promised place inundated by the "blessings" of God. He has delivered us from our past. He has given us freedom from sin and the hurts of sin by giving His very life to us and so there is not ONE of us that can stand and say that God has not done enough in our life that He would be justified in expecting to receive some fruit from us in return. God has provided everything that we need to produce holy fruit and sweet fruit at that! If there is something wrong in our lives that is stopping the fruit then we cannot blame Him and it must be a failure to yield in some area to His work of new creation in our lives! But if we do not bear Him fruit that He expects to find, then we become as a vine or fig tree that is burnt: useful only for the fire of judgment and hell! Never forget, oh child of God, that you were created and formed and planted and cared for because of one reason: to be fruitful for the King of Kings, the Creator of Jesus Christ! If we do not produce fruit, then we are worthy nothing to Him except as fuel for the fires of hell!

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I want to be fruitful! And I want to bring forth fruit that is pleasing to God! When He comes to see how His investment that cost Him His very life is coming along, I want Him to be pleased with my development and find His favorite kind of fruit growing amply in my life!

It was in Galatians chapter 5 that Paul listed the kind of fruit of which God desires and the things that will bring the curse of God. You've probably heard this before and we know this passage as "the fruit of the Spirit," but I would like to read it to you in the "get to the point" translation of "The Message."

Ouch! It seems easier to reason away our actions when we listen to King James English doesn't it? But understand what I read to you are "the fruit" of the Spirit and the "fruit of the Flesh." God is not interested in evil fruit and is only interested in receiving unto Himself what is pure and holy! And our purpose in life is to produce fruit for Him! If He were to come back right now, what kind of fruit would He find within our lives!?

Hear this preacher: in the parable of our text, and in Jesus' cursing of the fig tree, not one time is the tree measured. God doesn't care how far you've come or how big and mighty you are in God or how many miracles you can perform or how many gifts of the Spirit operate in your life IF there is no fruit! You can be the greatest preacher in the world with the most tremendous anointing of God and an awesome mind that reads Hebrew and Greek flawlessly but if you do not produce the fruit of the Spirit that God wants and craves; if our lives are not characterized by the love, peace, joy, patience, and forgiveness of God then we become useful only for the fire! Without the fruit of the Spirit, we are useless to God! And I double checked again this week what I have taught in the past: in the Greek, the word for fruit is singular so that in order to have the one fruit of the Spirit, you must have ALL of these things in your life!

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In reading the charcteristics of the fruit of the Spirit in the King James Version, you cannot help but notice that "love" is the first mentioned. And really, the rest proceed out of the first. That is, if you truly love God and others with a Godly love, then the remaining attributes will be the characteristics of your life. In the Song of Solomon, it is interesting to note that Shulamith uses both the vine and the fig tree to represent love (Song of Solomon 2:13). Scholars note that wine (made from the fruit of the vine) was a common drink at marriages (see John 2) and that the leaves of a fig tree are "heart shaped" (see McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia of the Bible). The scripture teaches us over and over that Godly "love" is the greatest and most important fruit of the Spirit. I'm not talking about the wild grapes of lust, but of a "Godly, sacrificial" love that loves when no love is returned and what scriptures call "agape" love. There are several different words in the original Greek for "love" and the one that is a fruit of the Spirit is "agape." It always refers to sacrificial, unselfish love from pure motives. It is always the "love" that is referred to when the scriptures say that God loved man.

It's that same word that is used in Mark 12 when Jesus said:

The two greatest commandments then are to love God and to love each other with "agape" love! Love must be the most important fruit to God! It is the sweetest that we can produce.

With all of this in mind, then we want to make sure that we do not produce "wild grapes" and a type of love that is not pleasing to God. Luckily we have "agape" love defined for us in scripture. It is better known today as the "love chapter" and I want to read it again for you in the New King James Version. Now keep in mind that if you and I do not produce love for God and for each other like this, then we are being unfruitful and are thus useful to God only as fuel for fire:

Let me read to you in The Message:

Jesus said that a tree "is known by it's fruit" (Matthew 12:33). Get your eyes off of others and honestly ask yourself this question: "do people see in me that kind of agape love that is talked about in 1 Corinthians 13?" If not then you are not being fruitful for God! If not you are not fulfilling your created role in this world!

I'm preaching to you that we need a revival of love. I'm preaching to you that it is the sweetest and most precious fruit to God! If you take 1 Corinthians 13 in context then chapter 12 before it talks about the gifts of the Spirit and prophesying and discerning spirits and speaking in tongues and miracles and all of that. And we need all of that! chapter 14 speaks about the need for both speaking in tongues (speaking anointed words in and unknown language as the Spirit gives the utterance) and prophesying (speaking anointed words from God in a known language as the Spirit gives the utterance) in our lives and church services. We believe that! But in the middle is the chapter of Godly love. In the middle Paul writes:

In other words, if I speak in tongues, understand all things, prophesy, have all faith, and give everything that I have to the poor -- if I do it without allowing the fruit of Godly, sacrificial love to exude from my life -- then I am nothing for God or to God! We need speaking in tongues, miracles, understanding, prophesying, and to give to the poor, but understand that on an individual basis, when God comes to judge my life, I will be judged on my fruit and not upon my stature. I will be judged solely on whether or not I was known for true, Godly love in my life! If I do not have the fruit of love in my life, then I am worthless to God!

Can I just get down to where we live and preach directly to you?! Can we tear off the masks of human logic and self-justification for a little while and be real with each other and God?! The problem with preaching about such a love is that everybody always says "well, I'll love God that way" but then we don't want to love people that way!" Let me remind you of some other agape scriptures:

We must "love our enemies" and not just those whom we like or trust! Guess what? The word for love here is still "agape" which is a "fruit of the Spirit!" If we do not love our enemies, then we do not have fruit for Him!

The word in the Greek for "brother" here can mean "descending from a common ancestor." If they friend or foe, we must love them. If we like them or dislike them, we must love them. Whatever the situation, if they descended from Adam, then we must love them and not only love them genuinely but love them with our actions according to 1 Corinthians 13! It must be Godly, agape love! That is the sweetest fruit to God! Without it, we are barren before God! We must have that kind of love exhibited in our lives!

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I read a quote this week that was originally coined by a respected, elder minister and was quoted by an elder minister that I highly respect. It basically said that Christians typically reach their full state of productivity within their first three years after receiving the Holy Ghost. There are exceptions, but for some reasons most people -- the average Christians -- are never more devoted than they became in the first three years.

With that in mind I want to remind you of the first text that we read. When the owner of the vineyard came the third straight year and found no fruit on the fig tree that He had planted in His vineyard, He ordered that it be cut down. But it was the dresser of the vineyard, the man whom the owner had put over the day to day care and cultivation, who begged for just one more year. Within that year, that tree would be pruned back even more and it would be "dunged" with manure placed around it's roots in the hopes that such radical measures would cause growth and fruitfulness! If it did not respond by the fourth year, then it was good for nothing but to be ripped up and removed from the vineyard. It was planted with one sole purpose in the mind of the owner of the vineyard: to produce fruit!

From the text it is obvious that the owner had returned at each year to check to see if there were any fruit. The parable isn't hard to figure out: the owner of the vineyard is God and the husbandmen or "dresser of the vineyard" is the pastor. The vineyard with it's place of growth is the church. You and I are the fig trees planted within the protective walls of the vineyard. When you come to God you must first die out to your old lifestyle and old locations through Repentance. We then are buried or "planted" in the ground through water baptism. Then new life springs forth with the infilling of the Holy Ghost. After a year, God checks to see if any fruit is showing. And each year thereafter. I'm not talking about soulwinning, because when you study fruit trees you will find that the ability to reproduce lies first in the development of fruit. If the fruit is developed then reproduction will come naturally. I'm talking about the fruit of the Spirit of which we must have attribute, most of all true, Godly agape love!

If God is not seeing that fruit, then He begins to "prune us" and allow the preacher to "dung us." He's going to allow the preacher to preach to you and to give you spiritual instruction. He's going to allow things in your life to become very "unpleasant." He's going to knock down some of your growth in a pruning process to see if you can produce the fruit that He's looking for. And if you are producing a little fruit, then He is still going to purge you and dung you and prune you. Jesus said in John:

To be what God wants you to be you must "abide in Him." You cannot run from your troubles or correction. You can't lean on your own understanding. You've got to stay in the vineyard and connected to Jesus Christ!

You must also allow yourself to be pruned. The more we grow in God, the more we must allow Him to cut things away from us until only the things that we really need are left! Only through the pruning process will we be able to produce much fruit! It is the combination of the winter and the pruning that causes a tree to produce more fruit each year! We must allow God to keep working on us! We must allow God to snip here and there. We must allow Him to keep working in our everyday lives and relationships with others.

Why? Because we must bear fruit. And not only fruit, but the right kind of fruit that God would be pleased with. We must exhibit and produce Godly love to Him and to everyone that we are around each and every day. Agape love is the sweetest fruit to God!

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I'm asking each person of this church to read 1 Corinthians 13 once every day of this coming week. And as you read it ask yourself "do people see this fruit in me?" "Am I producing this for God?" Remember that to be Godly is to be fruitful. But to not have the fruit of the Spirit and Godly love for Him and others is to be useful for nothing beyond fuel for the fire of judgment! I not only want to strive to be fruitful for God, but I want to offer Him the sweetest and best fruit that I can! God help us to love others as He has loved us!