Luke 13:6-9
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel. Our reading today and sermon
are from Luke chapter 13, verses six through nine. Luke chapter
13, verses six through nine. You can find that passage in
the Pew Bible on page 872. This passage, verses six through
nine, is the end of one of Jesus’ long
sermons. This sermon was begun by our
Savior in chapter 12, verse 1. It extends all the way to chapter
13, verse 9. He has spoken in this sermon
of being aware or being wary of the leaven of the Pharisees.
He’s encouraged the people of the kingdom to fear not men,
but to fear the one who can take away their body. He has challenged
them to acknowledge Christ. He’s given them the parable of
the rich fool. He’s asked them, implored them
not to be anxious. He has preached to them to be
ready for whatever God calls them to do. He has spoken of
how the gospel brings division between mothers and fathers and
in-laws and children and tight-knit families. He’s encouraged them
to settle with their accuser before they get hauled into court.
And to settle with them before they end up in jail, paying back
every penny they owe. And so today he ends his sermon
with a message of repentance. And it’s an agricultural parable. It’s a parable of a fig tree
in the midst of a vineyard. We are going to zero in on these
three verses. But remember, this is this is
the conclusion to Jesus sermon that he has preached all these
themes, all these topics. And I want to remind you how
lucky you are. The whole book of Hebrews, for example, 13 chapters,
I think it is. That’s a whole sermon. We took
at least a year and a half to go through Hebrew, so y’all are
lucky. Back in the old days, people would preach for one turn
of the hourglass and maybe a third if the congregation was willing.
So lest you think sermons are so painful these days, this is
three verses in what was a much longer sermon. But what Jesus
is going to speak to his hearers today, both his original hearers,
the church throughout the ages, but also we who sit here today
under the ministry of God’s word, is this, if you are fruitless,
you are useless. But if you bear fruit, you are
useful to God. And so unless God finds fruit,
you will be judged or you will be cut down. Let’s hear the word
of the living God. Now, as we read from Luke’s gospel,
chapter 13, beginning at verse six, Jesus told this parable. A man had a fig tree planted
in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it, and he found
none. And he said to the vinedresser,
Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig
tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use
up the ground? And he answered him, Sir, let
it alone this year also until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit
next year, well and good. But if not, you can cut it down. This is the word of the living
God. Let’s ask for his help and blessing. Pray with me. Lord, whether we are young or
old, wise or foolish, learned or simple, your word can be made
clear to each of us. And so we pray that your Holy
Spirit would open our eyes to see, unstop our ears that we
might hear, make our hearts tender that we might be compelled to
embrace Jesus as he is offered in the gospel and rest in him
alone for our salvation. And by this your word today be
built up in your holy word and comforted in the eternal truths
of your scripture. We ask for your grace, your help
and your blessing and we pray for it in Christ’s name, amen. Well, about a month or so ago,
we had some excitement around our house. Our apple trees of
a couple of years finally produced an apple. It was a teeny tiny
apple, and it was way at the tippy top of the tree. Well,
wouldn’t you know it, a couple more have since come. We were
away from home a few weeks, and we wondered, should we pick these
apples before we leave or leave them at risk of the birds coming
and feasting on them? But last night upon our arrival
at home, we checked the apples. They’re still there and they
have gotten bigger. It takes a little while for a
fruit bearing tree once it’s been planted to bear fruit. I’ve
been told that it takes about seven years for apples. I think
we’re either two or three, maybe at most four years in. And we
now have three, yes, a whopping three apples. We will not be
opening a vineyard or offering hay rides and all the rest this
fall, but we’re excited. There are three apples. Well,
this fig tree in our parable in Luke’s gospel is much like
that. These trees or this tree that
Jesus speaks of is probably about six years old. And the owner
of this vineyard comes to the vinedresser and says, I expect
it in years four and five and in year six, the year it now
is most likely in this parable, to find fruit. But what does
he find? He only finds this giant tree. This big tree in this particular
stage of its life is probably 25 feet tall. It’s a beautiful
tree. It provides shade. It’s adorning
the garden of this vineyard. It’s in rich soil, but it has
produced no return for the owner of the vineyard. It’s a beautiful
tree, but it is a fruitless tree. And the owner of the vineyard
says it’s a poor use of the ground. And so he tells the vinedresser,
cut it down. This is a reminder of maybe several
chapters back in Luke’s gospel. Jesus tells the Jewish audience,
Israel is like a fig tree and it’s planted in a vineyard, the
land of Israel, the promised land. But it bears no fruit. And Jesus warns them. He says
to them, you may call on Abraham as your ancestor. You may call
on all the blessings of being an Israelite and all that entails. But unless you bear fruit, a
day of judgment will come. A day of judgment will come and
the axe will chop you down and you will be cast into the fire
for judgment. Well, this parable is a reminder
of the history of God and his people. God is the owner of this
vineyard. He has planted it and he expects
fruit. He expects fruit from all the
efforts that he has given to this wonderful vineyard and this
fig tree. Jesus is the vine dresser. He’s
been laboring for nearly three years in his incarnational on
earth ministry as he prepares to go to the cross. And Israel
is the fig tree. Now, you know from reading the
scriptures that there are often agricultural illustrations and
parables. And to Jesus’ original hearers,
this was a parable that sort of poked them in the chest. It’s
you, Israel, who bears no fruit. Make this relevant for us this
day. Jesus is speaking to his church. Is his church faithful
and fruit bearing? But Jesus is also speaking to
us as individuals. Do you bear fruit from all the
privileges God in Christ has given you? Well, the message
of this passage is this. There is a fruit inspector. That
fruit inspector is God himself, and he will come. He will come
inspect. But the question is this. The
question of the day is what will he find? Will he find fruit in
his church? Will he find fruit in his people? And I want us to see from this
passage a couple of things that help us understand what Jesus
is really getting at. The first thing I want us to
consider from verse six of this passage is privileges. We are a privileged people. Why is Jesus, why is God in this
passage concerned about a fruitless tree? Well, it’s using up soil. It’s taking a wonderful spot
in a beautiful vineyard. It’s using up good soil. And
if the one tree that he has planted is not going to bear fruit, what’s
he going to do as a steward of a vineyard? He’s going to cut
it down. He’s going to till up the earth and he is going to
find a tree that will bear fruit. And so this passage shows us
in verse six, it shows us of our wonderful privileges that
we have in God almighty. This tree not only sat in good
soil, but it had a dedicated vine dresser to tend it and to
make it bear fruit. But that had not been the case
so far. Well, what about the privileges of God’s people? Think
about the privileges for Israel. They were chosen out of all the
nations of the earth. God says in Deuteronomy, I didn’t
choose you because you were great. I didn’t choose you because you
were wonderful or special. I chose you. You were the least
of all the nations, but you were precious in my sight. and tender
in my heart.” And so God gave to Israel. He gave to the offspring
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He gave to them the covenants.
He gave to them the law. He gave to them the Levitical
means of worship and providing sacrifice and atonement for sins. He gave them the prophets to
warn them. He gave them deliverance from
Egypt. He gave them the promised land. And he has given them the
Messiah, even Jesus. Think about New Testament Christians. Think about those on this side
of the covenant where Jesus came to this earth and his life and
death and resurrection were a reality to a people who saw the promises
of God realized in the Messiah. He’s given us not only Jesus,
he’s given us the teaching of the apostles. He’s given us the
early church and all of the doctrine and the creeds and the hymns
and the wonderful things we even enjoy to this day. We are children
of God who have the wonderful heritage of the Reformation.
The church for nearly a millennium fell into darkness. The word
of God was kept hidden away in foreign tombs. The priesthood,
the ministers of nearly a millennium, they were corrupt. They did not
minister the word of God to the people of God. And so the people
walked in a long, deep darkness until Reformers like Wycliffe
and Huss and Luther and Calvin and many others who would follow
said we must open the word of God to the people of God. We
must worship God in the way he desires to be worshiped. And
so since the Reformation, these last 400 years or so, we have
500 years, we have experienced an unleashing of the powerful
word of the living God. And it trickles down even to
this day into our associate reform Presbyterian heritage that we
so richly enjoy. But dear friends, we’re also
privileged in that we live in the USA, a nation that was formed
largely because people sought a place where they were not directed
how to worship by the crown, But they could worship God as
he desired to be worshiped. We live in the southeastern United
States. What do we call the South? We
call it the Bible Belt. We still are living on the barely
tail end of a Judeo-Christian culture where worshiping God,
living for God, serving God is such a privilege. It’s fast disappearing,
though, I think we would all agree. Many of us have grown
up in covenant homes where parents presented you before the church,
before God himself, and said, it is our desire that you know
God and love him and serve him. And we’ll teach you every way
we possibly can. Maybe some of you didn’t grow
up in covenant homes, but you somehow, someway, by God’s grace,
heard the gospel and now you’re part of the covenant family and
you have adopted these principles and values for your own homes.
You’re also privileged to be part of this church. Now I can
stand up here and say, oh, you’re privileged to be here. I’m the
pastor. And maybe that sounds a little self aggrandizing, but
let me tell you how blessed you are. You are part of a church
that is part of a denomination that still believes the Bible.
And our denomination believes the Bible more and more as time
goes by. Other denominations are believing
it less and less. And we’re seeing the trickle
down effect of the tide of liberalism and lack of belief in a supernatural
God, lack of belief in the miracles of Jesus and the power of the
Holy Spirit to transform sinners. We’re living in an era where
the church of the living God is no longer that. But, dear
friends, you are part of a congregation. that has a group of elders. We
are connected to a Presbytery. We are connected to a entire
denomination that loves the living God. We hold fast to his word. We lift up the cross of the Lord
Jesus as the only way to salvation. Our desire is to evangelize the
world and to send missionaries and Christians across the land. And so, dear friends, Israel
was privileged. Jesus’ audience that he’s speaking
to in this passage, they were dearly privileged as are you. And Jesus is reminding us today
of our privilege, the privilege of this fig tree to have sunshine
and soil and rain. And so you to have all the centuries
and millennia of Christian influence fall right into your lap. And
so, dear friends, we need to see that we are a blessed people.
We are full of great privileges. And verse six reminds us of that
when he says a man had a fig tree. planted in his vineyard. Dear friends, we are planted
in the vineyard of almighty God, and we should see that great
privilege. Well, verse seven leads us to
understand the expectations of God. We’ve seen our privileges.
Now we look at our expectations. We find those in verse seven.
Verse seven says about God, he said to the vinedresser, look,
for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree. What
are the expectations of God on his people? Well, we can get
the answer to that as we see God’s expectations on his vineyard,
on the fig tree in his vineyard. This is the central, the key
plant in his vineyard, which he has planted. He expects fruit. He expects figs. You plant a
fig tree, you want figs. You plant an apple tree, you
want apples, blueberry bushes, blueberries and so on. We expect
beauty from the things we plant and fruit from it. What should
the fig tree provide? Well, it should provide figs.
What should Israel, what should the church, what should you as
a Christian provide to God? What can God expect of you? Well,
as you become a Christian, you unite with the church of the
living God. You’re baptized. You’re in the discipleship program
of the church, or at least that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We’ve come upon hard times in evangelism in America. Evangelism
is something like this nowadays. You don’t want to go to hell
now, do you? And so you just accept Jesus in your heart and
you’re not going to go to hell. And we kind of leave it there.
It’s like the guy that comes to us and says, you need homeowner’s
insurance. You need fire insurance. You need life insurance. You
need car insurance. You don’t want to get into an accident and assume
all the risk yourself. And so we buy a policy that,
removes the risk from us and sends it to another. And that’s,
in a sense, what salvation or evangelism has become in 21st
century America. But God expects so much more
of us. If you’re going to follow Jesus,
you really need to follow him. And if you’re going to follow
Jesus, how is that done? Well, you sit at his feet. Now, is
Jesus walking upon the earth today? Is he going to come visit
village by village as he did during his earthly ministry?
No. But he has given us the church. When he ascended on high, he
gave us the church. He appointed ministers and elders
to make sure that the word of the living God is taught to every
Christian. And so we gather when the elders
gather us to learn and to grow and to serve and to be children
of light in this dark world. And God is seeking fruit from
his church. God wants us to bear fruit that
shows that the gospel has indeed saved us. Otherwise, when God
comes and he inspects his trees, his garden, and he finds no fruit,
he will cut it down. So what does Jesus expect from
us as his privileged children? He expects fruit. We’ll look at that a little bit
more in just a moment. But I want us to see a third thing from
this passage, and you find it in verse 8. And I simply want
to call it the ministry of vine dressing. What is what is a vine
dresser do? Or you could say it this way.
What does a minister of the gospel do? What does the eldership of
the church do? How do they dress the vine of
Almighty God? I’m sure every one of you in
the room has planted something. You’ve been to Lowe’s or the
nursery and the garden center, and you bought a plant, and you
get the little brochure that comes with it that says, dig
a hole twice as wide. And that’s where the thing goes
south, isn’t it? You try to dig a hole in hard North Carolina
red clay. It’s bad enough to dig the hole,
but to dig it twice as wide and twice as deep. And then what
do we do? We chop around, we get rid of the roots, and we
put good soil in there. And then as you take the plant
out of the container, it comes in. What is the next instruction?
It’s to break up the roots. They’ve gotten compacted inside
their plastic container. They’re ready to spread and to
go into the earth and to draw up water and nutrients and make
the plant grow. And that’s exactly what Jesus
is speaking of here in this verse eight about vine dressing. Verse
eight reminds us of the ministry of Jesus. He says, serve, let
the plant alone this year. Let me dig around it. Let me
put on manure. He wants to break up the bound
up roots. He wants to fertilize it. He
wants to vine dress. He wants to tend this plant and
see if it will yet grow fruit. And so Jesus earthly ministry
was one of dressing the vine of Israel. He came to a people
who walked in darkness and he brought to them great light.
He spoke of the kingdom. He preached repentance. He preached
faith. He preached hope. He preached
the values of the king and his kingdom. And so Jesus earthly
ministry is it’s drawing near to a close as he’s making his
way to Jerusalem, where he’ll suffer and die for the people
of God. He’s still seeing hard soil. He’s still seeing hard
hearts. He’s still seeing. fig trees, beautiful and grand
as they are with their canopies of branches, majestic in height,
but bearing no figs. And so Jesus in this passage
is a merciful savior. He says, let me keep tending
this garden. And dear friends, that’s what
we do week by week in the church of the living God. We are tending
the the vineyard of Almighty God. We’re breaking up the roots.
We’re putting on fertilizer and manure. We are preaching and
teaching the ministry of the word of the living God. You know,
we’re a small, simple church striving to be faithful. And
you look at the landscape of churches and churches have added
all these activities and events to their repertoire, if you will. But what are the basic marching
orders of the Church of the Living God? We’re to have worship, we’re
to preach, we’re to teach, we’re to pray with and for one another,
we’re to counsel one another and nurture one another in the
ways of the living God. And so if we, as a small, simple,
faithful church, continually preach and teach the word, put
the sacraments of Almighty God before you, pray together and
fellowship together and serve together, We will do the mind
dressing that God has called us to do. Read first and second
Timothy, read the the epistles speaking of the ministry of the
word. We want to preach the Christian life. We want to teach publicly,
privately, house to house, one on one and on all occasions that
are necessary, doing what Jesus commanded in his Great Commission,
making disciples by teaching you all that God has commanded. Oh, you can find alternatives
out there. You can find churches that serve up better fare, so
to speak. You can you can find churches that are more exciting,
more thrilling. They’re filled with smoke and fire and lights
and all the rest. But dear friends, unless they
preach and teach and proclaim. the living word of God, and as
they lift up Christ, you will be found wanting. If you look
for these alternate sources, the church has become secular.
It is doing all kinds of things but vine dressing, the great
vine of almighty God. Well, there’s a fourth thing
that this passage teaches us, and we find it in verse nine,
and it’s simply this. God is looking for fruit. So
what might that fruit be? Verse nine, Jesus says, if the
tree should bear fruit next year, well and good, but if not, you
can cut it down. Well, how do you tell if a tree
has fruit on it? Well, usually it’s hanging from the boughs.
It’s hanging from the limbs. Well, how do you tell if a church
is bearing fruit? How do you tell if Israel is
bearing fruit? How do you tell if you, the disciple of the living
God, are bearing fruit? I picked up a book this week
that had some very interesting essays on the Christian life
in our dark American culture. And there was a quote in this
book from Francis Schaeffer, who was a Presbyterian minister
in the 50s and 60s and 70s. I think he died in the early
80s. He influenced a lot of American Christianity by predicting what
would happen in America if the church forsook Christ and put
away the Bible. Now we’re seeing exactly what
he prophesied these 30 and 40 and 50 years ago. But Francis
Schaeffer said something like this. He asked this question,
can people tell that you are a Christian? Or I’m sorry, can
people tell that the father has sent the son by the way you live
a Christian life? Isn’t that an interesting question?
I mean, we have these metrics whereby which we measure a church.
How many got saved? How many were in attendance?
How thick was the smoke from the fog machine? You know, I’m
joking there a little bit, but we have these human metrics.
And we say, boy, we got a good church. It’s big, it’s strong.
And there may be no word or no Christ there. But isn’t what
Schaeffer said very interesting? Can the world tell that the father
has sent the son by the way you live your Christian life? That
is a very heart piercing question, isn’t it? God expects fruit from
his people. And so as you walk down the street,
as you go into your doctor’s office, as you sit in your workspace
at your workplace, as people see your children and your family,
as you live out of the doors of your house and your neighborhood
and on and on it goes, can people tell that the father has sent
the son by the way you live? Is there fruit? Is there fruit
in your life? How do you tell? Is there evidence
that the father has sent the son? Well, there’s a couple of
ways I think it manifests itself. The first is through sanctification.
Is God, by his word and spirit, through the ministry of this
church, through your personal reading and study and walking
with God, are you becoming more and more like Jesus and less
and less like Satan? Are you being conformed to the
image of God and being sanctified and made holy? Is the fruit of
the spirit evident in your life, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness?
Gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Or are the works of the devil
more evident in your life and morality and greed and other
worldly standards? How about good works? We know
good works do not save us. Well, actually, they do. It’s
the good works of Jesus that save us. But we are called we
are set apart by God into good works. When we serve others,
when we love others, when we serve the church, when we make
it possible for others to be ministered to and on and on it
goes, we do good things that are pleasing to God the Father.
They’re in accordance to his will and they’re helpful to our
neighbor. And so is there a fruit in your
life, the fruit of sanctification or holiness? Is there the fruit
of the Holy Spirit evident? Do you do good works unto the
glory of God and the betterment of your neighbor? Or are you
this beautiful 25-foot fig tree? And can’t you just picture this
image in your mind as much like the American church has been
over the last many decades. We spruce up for church, don’t
we? We put on our coats, we put on our ties, we sit in our pews,
we look right, we act right, we sit straight. But we could
in reality be this 25 foot fig tree that bears no fruit. Oh
yes, it’s big, it’s majestic, it’s been planted in the church
of the living God for years and years and years. It’s kept its
seed, it’s paid its tithes, it’s given its offerings, but it bears
no fruit. It provides beauty and shade,
but in reality, there are no figs. And God, the vine dresser,
will come. What does the world see? What
does God see on the branches, the boughs of our fig tree here
at First A.R.P. Church? Does he see beauty and
shade? Or does God and do the world
see beauty, shade and fruit and figs? Dear friends, this passage
is a strong reminder that God, the owner of the vineyard, the
maker of heaven and earth, he promises to return. He promises
to return and despite secular and liberal attempts to alter
the gospel, despite the pursuit of the American dream and the
secularization of the church or even our best efforts. Will
God find a church that loves the gospel? Will God find a church
when he inspects us? that bears fruit in keeping with
our repentance, that holds up the scripture, that lifts high
the cross, that preaches righteousness through faith in Jesus. Will God, when he comes and sees
our church, when God, when he comes and sees our own individual
lives, our families, will he say, let it live for it bears
fruit? Or will he say, I see no fruit,
cut it down. It’s a strong thing to consider,
isn’t it? It’s a deep thing to consider.
And I want us, as we conclude, to think about the character
of God, the mercy of Jesus, but a decision you must make. God
is a righteous one. He is the holy one of Israel
and it’s his vineyard, his right to come and inspect it. And it’s
his soil. If he sees something wasting his soil, he will take
it up and put something there that bears fruit. But what about
Jesus in this passage? He gives us a stay of execution,
doesn’t he? They’re not bearing fruit yet, Father. But let me
tend the garden a little more. Let me have the word preached
and the spirit do his work for just a little while longer. These
are echoes of what Peter says in one of his letters to the
church scattered across Asia Minor. God is patient, not willing
that anyone would perish. But friends, that patience will
run out. And so the challenge to you, the challenge to us as
a church is to get our lives straight before God, seeing that
we bear fruit so that when he comes, he will say, let it live
for it brings glory to my name and good to this dark and dying
world. Pray with me. Lord, as you press your gospel
into our minds and our hearts this day, may your spirit do
the work that needs to be done, that we might examine ourselves
to see if we are in the faith, that we might examine ourselves
to see if indeed we love you and we long for your appearing.
And it is evident by our lives that the son has sent the father
or the father has sent the son into the world and that we are
indeed new creations, that the old is gone, the new has come.
We’re bearing fruit in keeping with our repentance. Lord, make
these things so. Yes, so that we live a righteous
life. Yes, so that we. bear witness, but most of all,
so that you and the sun will be glorified by the way we live,
change lives as new creations. We ask for your grace and we
pray it in Christ’s name. Amen.