Predictably Fruitful, Predictably Stable

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0:00Whenever one visits a church, the first thing you do, as you well know, is you look around to see what the culture is, figure things out. In my particular setting, if you walk into a church and there's a clock on the back wall, you know the elders are in charge and not the pastor. What I've learned from your church is that this is the center section, since the pulpit's aiming at them, and I assume that you guys are okay. I learned in seminary that you're not supposed to mess with the pulpit when you go to a church or the pew bibles, I mean the pulpit Bible or anything, but I'm going to do both.

0:50Yeah, until later, right? We'll discuss this later. We are in Luke chapter 6, 43 to 49. Julie and I are glad to be here. We've been praying for this church. Of course, as you just heard, so many of you were up at Grace Community some time ago where we appreciated your presence at our worship service and opportunity to pray for you and all the other nice things I'm supposed to say. Let's go straight to Luke chapter 6. The Word of God. 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 thorn bushes, nor grapes picked from a bramble bush.

1:57The good person, out of the good treasure of his heart, produces good. The evil person, out of the evil treasure, produces evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and who hears my words and does them, I'll show you what he's like. He's like a man building a house who dug deep, laid the foundation on a rock, and when the flood rose, the stream broke against that house, could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. And when the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. Let's pray. Speak to us.

2:52Speak to us. Speak to us as only you can do, almighty God, but as surely you do. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, don't turn this into a live up to this or prepare for a bad day when you stand before God kind of passage. Yeah, you know, of course, as you saw, Jesus' words describe two different kinds of lives. Yeah, there's no question but that he's warning against one kind of life, commending another. Of course, we'll talk about that. It's in the passage. But for just a few minutes, I want to put more focus on the fact that Jesus is describing something real, really available to us, and more is really happening in you who love him right this second. When you first discovered or realized that this kind of life is not just possible, but with him and in him is typical, it should, and it probably did, push your joy level way beyond that of the excitement you felt with a new girlfriend or a new boyfriend that you once thought, you know, this is as good as it gets. It pushed you past the excitement of getting into college that you thought, you know, this is going to open the doors to my greatest possible future. It pushed you past the new job excitement and even way past the joy and the hope of, am I really doing this? The excitement you felt standing up and saying, I do together with the one you love. Jesus is describing what it's like when the Spirit who lives in us wonderfully, in fact amazingly, freed us to live a life that brings a touch of heaven kind of lifestyle into a world that's anything but heaven. But from Jesus' own lips

5:00come the picture of an abundant life where still waters and food in the presence of our enemies is found. This sermon of Jesus is for his disciples and it's the gate that opens out to the path of righteousness for his name's sake. This is the escape from the restless and the ceaseless wanderings that this world offers to us and to our children. This is the life of hope, of love, of joy, of peace, of steadfast love and mercy that follows us all the days of our lives. It's the way that ends in the house of the Lord forever where we, redeemed, fully sanctified and glorified saints of God, tirelessly and effortlessly enjoy singing the hallelujahs of praise to the Lion of Judah who is the Lamb.

5:58Taking the sermon Jesus gave from start to finish as you've done, you see it's a picture of our Messiah's own life. The life he brought to earth and gives to us so that we can walk with him and live out his kingdom on earth in the time between his first and second coming. And it's a good life. Because our passage today is a summary, an application describing everything he has said in his sermon up to now, here's my first point. In his kingdom, your life is predictably fruitful. Of course, verses 43 to 45.

6:39In his kingdom, your life is predictably fruitful. So when you read the start of Jesus' sermon, you saw that in God's kingdom, we own nothing. Instead, we are stewards of everything that we've been given. That is, we are the poor in this world, but rich in his. You saw that we are a kingdom of people who pray for those who hate us, who provide for our enemies when they are in need, just as Jesus did and in fact still does. We are a people who love with that first Corinthians kind of love for those who who can't and won't be of any benefit to us. That's because it's who we are as sons and daughters of God's kingdom. And you saw that we are not responsible to judge and to condemn others, but instead, we are free for the joy that's set before us to selflessly love and serve the people in this world in his name in just the way that Jesus for the joy set before him freely and selflessly loved and served you. Now, first understand that when Jesus talks about good fruit, he's not talking about just doing nice things about just doing nice things. What he means by good fruit is words and actions that come from people who are new creations, born again to eternal life, people who are born of the spirit and so unavoidably have and are growing in a new motivation, in a new love, a new heart, a new mind to live for him who died for us. And you know that because the passage tells us that he's talking to disciples, followers of his who are learning that they are citizens of a different kingdom because now they have a whole different king

8:50who brings with him a whole different way of thinking and a whole different way of living. And so yes, this this good fruit, bad fruit discussion requires us based on how Jesus describes citizens of the kingdom to ask, is this me? And then to exclaim in horror or in joy, depending on what you find, this is me. But we tend to stay at wondering if we're wondering if we measure up and worse, assuming we don't. Understand why we focus on not being the bad fruit instead of growing in the good. A great problem that we Christians face is that our sin and our particular sins haven't been taken out of our experience yet.

9:45And so we have to be a bit cynical or or at least careful about the real motivation behind what we do and what we say. And that need to be careful came home to me when when I recently bought a new fancy camera. It's the kind that has settings that take quite a while to figure out. The thing takes great pictures, whether it's landscapes or animals or people, but with one consistent exception. The one consistent exception is when someone uses it to take a picture of me. Apparently my fancy camera has an effects setting that's marked old with oversized stomach. Because when people take pictures of me with my camera, that's, that's all that I see. You know, in the mirror, when I'm shaving, and I don't see Tom Cruz, but, but I see a pretty nice looking fellow looking a lot under 70 with his stomach of a 40 year old.

10:53And the camera shows a guy close to 70 with some rather disconcerting features and a, a tummy two or three times what the mirror shows. And so I find myself at a crossroads. Will I believe my camera? Especially since when everybody else looks at the picture of me from my camera and they always say, what a great camera that looks just like you. Well, here's what I figured out. What I see in the mirror ignores a lot. But the camera doesn't tell me the whole story either. What the camera doesn't show is the progress that my stoutness exercises have helped me make in these tummy wars. It doesn't tell how many more push-ups I can do than I did three months ago or, or how much weight I've lost. It looks at today and it says to me, I hope this isn't where you're stopping. So please, do allow the camera of this passage to show you that you're not perfect and you still have some bad moments. You aren't perfect and you do have bad moments, but if those two facts about yourself bother you, embarrass you, hurt your soul. Rejoice. It's because the growing motivation of your life is more and more your love for Jesus. You're moving more and more into the holy place where you find within yourself that spirit-led deepening desire that through your life, through your life, Jesus is shown truly who he is. The Lord of all things, the preeminent one, the glorious one, the precious one, the treasure of heaven and earth.

12:51So then, let this examination, this Bible-led evaluation tell you the truth about yourself, but the whole truth, the truth that brings you joy that when, that what characterizes life in this kingdom is more and more taking over your life. Let it show you that you aren't what you were, even as it shows you that you aren't what you will be. If you love Jesus, then let the progress the spirit reveals, remind you that as a member of his kingdom, by his promise, your good fruit now will forever glorify him as you are being changed, made pure gold in Christ Jesus. That's predictable, because that's the promise of God for you and for all who love Jesus. Now, Jesus reminds us that when what comes out of our, that what comes out of our mouth reflects the treasure that our hearts are set upon. We've read that. So, what treasure do your words reveal? Don't be easy on yourself, but if you find that when you reflect back that your motivations, your actions, your words, in fact, are reflective, growing love for him, then you can say from experience, the predictable experience of God's people. Yes, I am an heir of salvation, a purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood. That's me. Yes, my life is more and more a foretaste of heaven divine. My heart is more and more set on loving and following and bearing fruit for his honor than it used to be.

14:50And if that's true, then it's because the king of heaven is changing you. You have great reason to be assured that you will hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. His spirit has done that. His spirit. And rejoice because he will continue his good work in you until the day of Christ Jesus. And that's predictable because that's what it means to be in his kingdom.

15:30Of course, it's essential that this passage be our camera. But my plea to you is that as you read this passage later today or later this week, go to him. Ask him to show you the inclination of your heart, your motivation for what you do. And if your motivation is not to be pleasing to him, and that's okay with you, make no excuses. It's because you are the wrong kind of tree. And he can change that. Plead with him to do so. But if you're seeing growth of the right fruit in you, the good works from the obedience of faith that are done because he is glorious to you. And so you live for his honor and his praise. If that's the kind of fruit you're seeing, then of course, I'll say again, rejoice.

16:28That can only come because you are a citizen of the right kingdom by his grace, by his mercy. So, how do we protect our hearts from treasuring anyone or anything other than Jesus? Others stronger than we are today have fallen prey to this world's devices and to Satan whispers. And we can easily drift if we forget keeping our eyes fixed on him and think only of the waves that are surrounding us today. So how do you protect the treasure? Well, good news. It's by what you are doing right this second. Making worship with God's people in his church a priority. It's by assuming that the Spirit is at work because, guess what? He is.

17:27It's by continuing to assume that you aren't doing well enough and never will because that assumption is what keeps us leaning into the gospel for the rest of our lives. And that's easy for God's people, for the people in his kingdom. The gospel always becomes more and more precious to the growing Christians. We'll be relying on Christ and on the Spirit's power for all eternity. So certainly we'll do that now in this sin-soaked world with all its dangers and toils and all its snares. Doing what I suggest will keep you from letting the guilt fig, sorry, the guilt factor stop you from actively enjoying the life that Jesus is giving you today where you are. See, that guilt factor is a potential booby trap for you.

18:26Don't fall for it. Bring the inward struggles to Jesus each and every time you see or experience them. One big place we feel guilty is that we haven't put enough time into our walk. So don't let the time problem that we all have keep you from growing in grace with the time that you do have. Don't moan what you don't have but use what you do. Things change. Times of life change. Be disciplined to use what you have where you are at this time in your life right now. But also remember that this life is one thing but it's made up of many parts. You will find him in those times of private and of public worship. Of course you will. And you will also find him through faithful obedience when for example, you do your job well. When in his name you do the good works you were created to walk in. It's the minute by minute offering of your life and of living for his glory and living to enjoy him forever that expands true worship from only those private times or those public times of worship like this to include all that you have offered to him when by the mercies of God you present your bodies a living sacrifice acceptable to God which is your spiritual service of worship. You in Christ who have done that you are good trees and by his spirit predictably good fruit is born. Yes he works quietly. Yes he works calmly and over time and and seemingly in secret like yeast moving through the dough. But predictably predictably it shows in the loaf that is your life.

20:38And so in his kingdom your life is predictably fruitful. And second in his kingdom your life is predictably stable. In his kingdom your life is predictably stable. Verses 46 to 49. Of course you've got the point already. A bad foundation of a house means it's going to fall. Good foundation means it won't. But it's at the beginning of the paragraph where Jesus asks this diagnostic question. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and don't do what I say? See that's what we have to focus on.

21:19Obviously it's the person who not only calls Jesus Lord but acts on that fact by doing what he says whose life is a firm foundation. And thank God Jesus is Lord of all. We don't make him Lord of all he is. And and not the what is it Lord of all in our lives is not the teams that our children are on or not our jobs. It's not even our desire to enjoy one more cup of coffee on the back porch on nice Sunday mornings. It's not everyone who thinks that way though as you well know. But we do.

22:02We do. It's why we're here. We do. And once we understand that he is Lord and we are not, we realize that this mindset is the essence of who we are in Jesus kingdom. He is our firm foundation. Tim Keller talked about the time when he first recognized what it means when the Bible said Jesus is Lord. He said it was when he was a college student and he went to a conference. And at the conference there was a lady named Barbara Boyd who gave a talk on the lordship of Jesus.

22:43There were two things that she said about it. First she said that since Jesus is Lord, you can't divide him into the Jesus who is easy and doesn't take much room in your life from the Jesus who takes over every part of your life. She pointed out how ridiculous that is to think you can divide him by saying that if you were to invite me, she said, over for dinner and when I knock at the door, you open the door and say, well, Barbara, come in, but Boyd, you stay out.

23:21I wouldn't know what to do. I'm Barbara Boyd, she said, not one or the other. I'm both of those things together and you can't divide Jesus either, she said. He is Lord and you either accept him for all of who he is or you get none of him. And then she went on to describe and apply the reality of Jesus is Lord of all this way. She said, if the distance between the earth and the sun is like the thickness of a piece of paper, it would take a stack 70 feet high to represent the distance to the next nearest star. The stack of paper that represents the diameter of our little galaxy would be 310 miles high. And she went on, our galaxy is just a speck in a universe where there are billions of galaxies. She read from Hebrews 1.3 that says, Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power.

24:27And she said, he holds everything together with his little pinky. And then the punchline. Do you ask somebody like that into your life to be your assistant? You probably came to Jesus at first with an agenda. You needed help. Needing that help got your attention, but you didn't stay there, did you? Didn't you by his grace say, all to Jesus I surrender? All to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him in his presence daily live. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed savior.

25:20I surrender all. See, that's the stable foundation that will sustain your life because he is the stable foundation that sustains all life. And particularly, specifically, you. You've probably seen people who live with Jesus as their firm foundation. People who've gone through hard, in fact, really hard things, yet they pray like Jesus did. Father, if there's any other way, take this cup from me. But thy will be done. And you tend to compare them to Job because through their real tears and heartache, they say, nonetheless, blessed be the name of the Lord. And they're like roadmaps for the rest of us, aren't they? Well, how did they get there? Well, they built their house on the rock, which is Jesus.

26:29Him who holds the universe together and who is also the one they know sovereignly guides their lives as a good shepherd. If your foundation is the same as theirs, then when the time comes and you're looking back on your life, perhaps from the perspective of heaven, you will say, surely goodness and mercy did follow me all the days of my life. And here I am in the house of the Lord forever. I doubt it takes that long, but you'll surely see it then, won't you? See, the Lord knows how changing this life is. He's the one who changes it for us. He called Abraham out of the comfortable and out of the known, the expected, the seemingly stable to a new land. And it's like that over and over with people in the Bible. At some point, every story in the Bible screams that this is not the stability the person expected for their lives. Instead, he gives a different stability, a better stability that witnesses to the world what we want them to know. I have a redeemer and great is his faithfulness.

27:57This stability he gives is not just that you now have a calm personality where you didn't before. Many of us don't. It doesn't come just because you get older or richer or more settled. Ask any person you're trying to talk into giving up their car keys or moving into a place that can care for them sufficiently. And you'll see very clearly that age and money don't make people feel more stable or secure. No, but this faith that we have been given puts us in the kingdom of an unchanging God whose plan for your life goes in only, only one direction. See, this faith of ours usually looks a lot like that of the progress in Peter's life. Do you remember? First, he went from fisherman to disciple. Well, that was a privilege. That's a great joy. But then Jesus moved him from the safety of the boat into the water where he progressed to sinking beneath the water. But then he called out to the safety of Jesus. But isn't that what made it surprising then to read about his mess up when he went from, Jesus, I'll die with you to, I don't know him. Not me.

29:23Yet the next step, you remember, was to hear the words from Jesus himself, Peter, do you love me? And by the work of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, when we hear the question he heard, like him, don't we hear our voices say, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And then we too hear this gracious invitation to join in his work in this world. Then feed my sheep. That's why we're here. Here's a question. Is that a dangerous life? Well, it's dangerous if you don't go into that life. Ask the one talent man about the results of listening to his own idea of what is safe. Will calling him Lord and doing what he says cause you to leave, to lose your life? Well, that's the point, isn't it? The one who is Lord calls us to die to self.

30:33Take up your cross, he says. Follow me. Do any of us imagine that being kingdom people is not scary? It can be quite scary and often is. But it is safe. It's safe. If you're a member of his kingdom, then yes, you struggle, but you don't fall apart. You have a redeemer. You have a God who has lived this life like us. And he bore the worst that anybody could bear, our sin. He pled to be free from the burden, but he never deviated from the task of redeeming us. The same spirit then, and listen to this, the same spirit that led him is the spirit who dwells in us.

31:23So that we say, for example, as did William Borden, a young man who in the last century gave away his fortune, which was significant to be a missionary. But then he died of meningitis in Egypt during that last step toward getting to the field to serve his Lord. After giving away his fortune, he wrote in his Bible, no reserves. Leaving home and family, knowing that he would probably never see them again, he wrote in his Bible also, no return. And learning that he would not recover from his illness and would never fulfill what he thought was the goal of his life, he wrote, no regrets.

32:18You see, those are the words of someone with a firm and eternal stability that only our God gives. And that's the kind of thing we will all say on our deathbed if we are in Christ. Or consider Elizabeth Elliot, who on leaving her place of ministry with tribes in Ecuador with little to show for it, but hardship and loss, wrote in her diary, Lord, you have kept your word. Or how about the words of her first husband who wrote, who passed away, by the way, at some time. Well, he was martyred in Ecuador. Her first husband, though, wrote, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. See, those are kingdom words. Our words. There are probably some here who don't quite know what all that's about. And life is hard for you and things aren't looking like what you hoped they would be or that they're going to be fixed anytime soon. But isn't that exactly the situation the disciples on the road to Emmaus were facing just after the resurrection? Remember that? Men moaning over the death of their hopes and dreams because of Jesus' death, even though he had told them to expect it, he told them of the resurrection. How silly does that look to us? But hasn't he told us what to expect in this life?

34:04And the next? Well, he has. Which is why the words of the whole sermon on the mount should make sense to us. And if they make sense to you and you intend to follow him, they are life and health and peace and the pathway that has led you safe thus far and the pathway that will lead you home. See, the way people deal with troubles without Jesus is to lie to themselves. And that works right up until the time that it doesn't. So now, my plea and my invitation to you is this. Build your life on him who will change you, who will shake you, who will surprise you, who will enthrall you, who will delight you, who will make you question yourself and your choices. But he will never leave you or forsake you and will always be to you a stone of help, a rock of stability in this life. You who love Jesus enjoy the only possible result of consistently coming to him, hearing from him, and doing what he invites and commands you to do.

35:29And that only possible result is eternal fruit. Eternal stability by which you avoid the inevitable and total destruction of a life without Jesus. So blessed are those who hear these words and blessed are you who keep them. Let's pray. And we do pray. We pray with thanksgiving and with joy, with fear, with trepidation, with pleading. Don't let us fall. And then we remember the promise again. I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. So keep us. Keep us. Remind us of the joy that is ours, the joy that will be ours, as kingdom people, your people. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.