Luke 6:43-45
Please turn in the gospel of
Luke to the sixth chapter, verses 43 to 45 will be our reading
today. Luke chapter six, verses 43 to
45. We read just a few moments ago
in Jeremiah 31 about how the Lord gives us new hearts when
he transforms us. When he makes us new, he gives
us new hearts. And as we study this topic of
good trees bearing good fruit, bad trees bearing bad fruit,
we understand through one of the many vivid illustrations
that God gives us in the Bible, that Jesus gives us in his teaching,
that it’s from the inside, it’s from the heart that our good
works come. But it’s through a changed heart,
a heart that has been changed and made new by Almighty God.
So we keep that in mind as we read God’s word. Hear now from
the gospel of Luke. This is chapter six, beginning
at 43. Jesus says, 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 are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good
treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out
of his evil treasure produces evil. For out of the abundance
of the heart, his mouth speaks. Let us pray together. Our gracious
God, we recognize that the words on the pages of our Bibles are
from you, holy men of old. Long ago wrote these words down.
They were carried along. They were moved by the Holy Spirit
to write down exactly what you wanted for your church to have
in their hands, to hold in their laps, to treasure in their hearts
so that we might bear up under the pressures of this world and
its teachings, the desires of remaining sin, the flesh that
is in us, but also the wiles, the temptations of the devil.
So we pray now that your word would do its work, that it would
be a sword in our belt, that we might wage war against the
things that would tear us down as your children, as your servants.
We pray that your word would go deep into our hearts today,
that by your spirit, you would water it, that you would cause
it to grow in order that we might live for your glory and the good
of others. We ask for your help and blessing
in this endeavor, for without you, we could do nothing. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen. Some of you in your high school
or college days may have studied the subject of logic. And logic
is, simply put, the study of why things happen. If this is
true, then that is true. If one plus one equals two and
those sorts of things, logic is the way the world works. We
live in a very illogical world. We live in a world because of
the scientific age that says everything we see, something
came from nothing. That’s not logical, is it? Something
can’t come from nothing. We live in a world that one moment
says something is not living and in the next moment it is
living, but in the moment when it’s not living, at least according
to our definition, it’s worthy to be put to death. We define
life. We define natural order. We define all kinds of things
really in this day and age through illogic. It’s a illogical world
we are living in. And Jesus takes us to a teaching
today that Luke gives us in his gospel. It’s also found in the
gospel of Matthew with a few extra verses added to it. But
it’s a verse that’s in a sense, a lesson in logic. Some of you
in the coming weeks will plant a garden. And you’ll plant a
garden in rows. And in row one, you might plant
tomatoes. Row two, you might put corn. Row three, you might
put squash. And in row four, you might put
turnips or whatever it is you love to put in your garden. And
on a little stick, you will put maybe the packet of the seeds.
And you’ll say, this is corn, this is the radishes, or whatever
it is you planted. And when harvest time comes,
when The sprouts have done what they’ve done and the rain and
water and sun and all that have done what they’ve done. You should
expect to reap what you sowed. Well, Jesus is saying to us today,
he’s saying this, the good person out of the good treasure of his
heart produces good. The good person out of the treasure
of his heart produces good. Good trees bear good fruit. Then there’s a negative statement.
Bad trees bear bad fruit. And then he makes this wonderful
statement. Every tree is known by its fruit. We’ve just studied
it last week, a section that said, don’t be judgmental. Don’t
be condemning. Don’t be a spec inspector when
you’ve got that great big beam, that great sized log in your
own eyes. But today we come to a passage
that seems to say judge, make judgments. We judge by the fruit
of a person’s life. One of the things that I’ve had
the privilege of doing over the last 15 or 16 years as a minister
is to sit with the elders and to interview new members. And
one of the things we’re looking for when we interview new members
is what we call a credible profession of faith. We want to know your
story. When did you realize you were
a sinner? When did you realize that Christ was the only answer
to your need of salvation? When did you come to faith in
Jesus? And then how have you grown? And then we begin to ask
questions like, how do you bear fruit in your life? What are
evidences of your faith? What are evidences of your Christian
living? Do you love to worship? Do you
keep the Sabbath day? Do you give of your tithes? Do
you give offerings? Do you give of your time and
talents to the church? Do you read the word? Do you
love the word? Do you hate your sin? Do you
love what is good? What are the evidences of your
faith? And that’s a biblical way to
look at a person, isn’t it? You’re a tree. You say you’re
a good tree. Tell us about your good fruit.
So as we walk through this passage today, I want us to look at it
from three different categories. The first category is this, a
good person. And you’ll find all three of
these categories in verse 45. A good person. Verse 45 tells
us this. It says the good person out of
the good treasure of his heart produces good. So let’s talk
for just a moment about the good person. Some of you are scratching
your heads and you’re thinking, you’re thinking like Paul. You’re
thinking the book of Romans. There is no one righteous. There’s no such thing as a good
person. There is no one righteous. No, not one. You’re thinking
correctly. There is no good person. In fact,
Romans 3, 23 says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory
of God. So how can a person be called
good? Well, the real question we probably
ought to be asking is how can a bad person be made good so
that they can then be called a good person? Well, we remember
our theology. We remember what’s in our Bibles.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone
and the new has come. We remember something like it
said in the book of Colossians that our old nature, our old
man, our sinful nature was put to death with Christ at the cross.
It was crucified with him. Our old nature is dead and we
have been made alive in Christ Jesus. If anyone is in Christ,
he is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has
come. The Holy Spirit has filled him. It has animated him. It
has cleaned us up and now guides us and the word of God washes
us. It ritually cleanses us as we
read it and study and we let it seep deep into our minds and
our hearts. All of this is a gift of faith.
There is no one righteous, no, not one. Well, there was one
righteous. It was the Lord Jesus Christ.
And when we come to the end of ourselves and we come to faith
in Jesus and we believe in him alone and rest in him alone for
our salvation, the gift of faith then leads us to the gift of
righteousness. God in his sight, in his Judgment
sees us as if we’ve never sinned. He sees us as if we have always
obeyed him. And so then God can look upon
us and see us as a good person. And so when our passage in verse
45 says this, the good person out of the good treasure of his
heart produces good. It’s speaking of a Christian.
It’s speaking of a new creation. It’s speaking of a person who
has received the blessings of the new covenant, which we read
about in Jeremiah 31. It’s speaking of the person made
new, raised from the dead by almighty God, who by faith receives
Jesus and rest in him alone for salvation. Remember, before Christ,
we were not good people. Before Christ, we were an evil
tree producing rotten, dead fruit. And as Jesus says in this parallel
passage in Matthew’s gospel, bad trees producing bad fruit
are destined to be cut down. and thrown into the fire. Jesus,
he gives us this image. Good trees produce good fruit.
Bad trees produce bad fruit. And in his judgment, bad trees
are cut down and cast into the fire. And so there’s the good
person. The next thing this passage teaches
us is the good treasure. Look, if you will, at verse 45,
it says the good person out of the good treasure of his heart.
produces good. What does this mean? Out of the
good treasure, out of his good treasure, he produces fruit. Some of you may you may still
have a coffee can that you keep a little savings in, but you
probably at some point in your life, you kept a coffee can in
the kitchen cupboard or maybe a box under the bed. You had
a secret stash where you kept some change and some dollars.
And over time, as you added to it, it grew. It was your treasure
chest. It was your piggy bank. It was
your secret little stash of money for a rainy day or to purchase
something you couldn’t afford at the time, but you wanted to
save for. It was your money for when you
got in a pinch. And that’s the picture Jesus
is giving here. Your heart is like a treasure
box. Your heart is like that coffee
can in the cupboard. Your heart is that nest egg where
you tuck away, you store up good things. And as we’re going to
see in just a moment, good things come out of it. But what is this
good treasure? Well, this good treasure is the
storage of your heart. And let me encourage you in this
way. Unless you’re putting something
in, nothing will come out. To use the analogy that Jesus
is giving here, if you had an orchard, an apple orchard, and
you decided to plant some trees, but did not water them. You decided
to plant some trees, but did not treat them for pest. You
decided to plant some trees, but you did not prune them. You
decided to plant some trees and expected an apple harvest, but
you did not fertilize and nurture these plants. Nothing good would
come. And so what Jesus is saying is
the good person The one saved by faith in Jesus out of the
good treasure of his heart, he’s going to produce good measure.
But it comes first when there’s good things in that treasure,
good things in that storehouse. As a Christian, in order to grow
in grace, you’ve got to put yourself under the ministry of the church.
Why did the risen and exalted Jesus leave us the church? Why
did he raise up ministers? Why did he raise up elders? Why
did he give us his word from holy men of old who were carried
along by the Holy Spirit? In fact, why did as he left earth
give us his Holy Spirit? Why did he give us the word preached?
Why did he give us the sacraments? Why did he give us prayer? Why
did he give us Christian fellowship? He gave us these things in order
that our treasure may be filled as we study the word, that our
treasure may be filled with his promises, that our treasure may
be filled with Christian friendships and accountability, that our
treasure may be filled with assurance of our salvation through these
gifts that he gives to us in the church. And so we must feed
our hearts. We must feed ourselves on a diet
of the word. One of the things that we offer
as a church. is we offer a steady diet of
the scripture. You can come to a evening men’s
study, a daytime men’s study, the same for the women. You can
come to Sunday school. You can come to morning church
and hear a sermon. You can come to evening church and hear a
sermon. If you call me, I’ll come knock on your door and we’ll
talk about God’s word. There are plenty of others in
the church who will do it. We’d like to open the Bible and teach
the Bible. There are all kinds of things
a church may do in this world. But the most important thing
we do after holding public worship is we open and teach the Bible. It’s like opening a kitchen and
preparing food and putting it on a table. You’ve just got to
come eat so that your treasure, so that your storehouse is filled
with good things. You know, in the confession of
faith, chapter one, where it speaks about the Bible, it speaks
about God giving us the Bible for this reason. He wants us
to know the truth and he wants us to know his promises and he
wants us to know our marching orders. Because he knows that
our sinful hearts, the flesh that remains in us will be at
war within us. He knows that Satan is the same
wicked hissing serpent who was more crafty and appeared to Satan
or appeared to even Adam in the garden and appeared to Jesus
in the wilderness. And he is trying to get you to
defect. He’s trying to get you to come
to his side and to renounce Christ and come follow him. God also
knows how tricky this world is and how appealing this world
is and how seductive this world is. And so he’s given us to wage
war against the world. And against Satan and against
the flesh, he’s given us his word and he’s saying, put this
good treasure into your storehouse, fill up your coffee can, fill
up your piggy bank, fill up your secret stash box with the word,
with Christ and with the spirit and not with the world, Satan
and the flesh. A very good illustration of the
benefits of this comes to us in Psalm 1. Blessed is the man. And notice the language of Psalm
1, who does not sit, walk, or stand with the ungodly, with
the wicked. But he delights in the law of
the Lord, and on it he meditates day and night. And notice the
promise of Psalm 1. He is like a tree planted by
streams of water. In all that he does, he prospers,
and in due season, he bears fruit. And so if you examine your life
for just a moment, just stop and think quietly,
do I bear fruit? If I do bear fruit, what kind
of fruit am I bearing? Do I look like a good tree? Do
I look like a evil tree? Am I filling my life with the
word? Am I making myself available
to all the times the elders call the people of God together so
that I can get fed and filled full and so that my tree, when
it’s harvest time, is producing fruit, fruit, fruit. It’s a good
question to ask. Am I filling up my storehouse?
with good treasure from Almighty God. Blessed is the man whose
delight is in the law of the Lord. He is like a tree planted
by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season. A good
person, good measure, or good treasure, and now third, good
measure. Notice the logic, the way verse
45 speaks. The good person, out of the good
treasure of his heart, produces good. Good person, good treasure,
now good measure. Some of you love apple picking.
Some of you love strawberry gathering. Some of you love blueberry picking.
Some of you love to gather blackberries. And you realize that when you
go to the farm or maybe you have a little patch on your own property,
you realize that when the fruit comes, it took a lot of work.
It took soil. that was healthy. It took cultivation.
It took rain. It took freedom from pest. It
took sunshine. It took all the processes of
science, plus your tender, loving care. And when you have a table
full of apples and strawberries and blueberries and blackberries
and the good measure that comes from them, right? It’s not about
the apple picking, it’s about the cider, right? It’s not about
the blueberry gathering, it’s about the cobbler. It’s not about
the strawberry gathering, but it’s about that wonderful topping
for your vanilla ice cream. It’s not about the blackberries,
but it’s about the cobbler with a good couple scoops of ice cream
on top. And you see what good measure
is. There’s planting. There’s cultivation, there’s
growth and there’s gathering and that gathering produces good
measure. Friends, the word of God never
returns void. If you’re a new creation in Christ
Jesus and he’s begun a good work in you that he will see to completion,
it’s all of God’s grace, right? We believe that. But there’s
Christian duty. There’s Christian duty, it’s
putting yourself in the path of the word, putting yourself
in the path of God’s people. It’s putting yourself in the
means of grace so that God can fill you full so that as you
grow, you produce fruit. The word of God never returns
void. It dwells in us richly. And the promise of Psalm 1 is
for us. If we don’t sit, walk or stand
with the ungodly, but we’re like a tree planted by streams of
water because we delight in God’s word. We meditate on it day and
night. We are like a tree planted that
will bear fruit. This is the logic of grace. This
is the logic of godliness. This is the logic of the gospel.
This is the logic of the way the Christian world works. You know, harvest time will come. There will be a proving of who
you are as a person and harvest time will come and bad fruit
can’t come from a good tree and good fruit can’t come from a
good tree and good fruit can’t come from a bad tree. For what does Jesus say at the
final verse of this passage, verse 46, it says, Verse 45, out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaks. Dear friends, whatever you’ve
put in here, whatever you’ve put in your coffee can, whatever
you’ve put in your treasure, which the Bible says is your
heart, it will overflow and it will often come out through your
mouth. but it will also come out through your actions. And
so what’s in your heart? What is the abundance of your
heart? What are you feeding on? What
do you center your life around? And there’s a warning really
for us in this passage. We live in a world that can distract
you from the things of God very quickly. We live in a digital
age and this digital age with these digital gadgets, it has
robbed our minds. We can’t think any longer. We
can’t speak in coherent sentences any longer. I was speaking with
a fellow who teaches high school English and he says young people
can’t think and they can’t write. He says they can’t even complete
a thought on paper. We’re living in a digital age
that has robbed us of our creativity. But it’s done more than that.
It’s robbed us of our desire to sit and to devour and to feed
on God’s word. It’s cut our attention span in
short. And dear friends, we got to remember
the Christian faith is unique in this way. It’s God speaking
to us. And it’s us listening to God.
And this is a world that doesn’t listen. This is a world that
doesn’t interact. This is a world that likes moment
by moment digital distractions. We love sports. We love work.
We love being amused. If we were to be put on trial
for being a Christian, if the fruit were to come out of the
trunks and the branches and the limbs of our trees, could we
be convicted based on evidence for what Jesus is teaching here
is what’s on the inside will show itself on the outside. Let us pray. Our Lord and God,
we thank you that you show us a mirror of ourselves in your
word. You show us exactly who we are and we pray that we would
not like what we see. that we would be dissatisfied
with where we are because for sure by our own human weakness,
we have not filled our treasures full of the riches of scripture. We could tell all kinds of pieces
of trivia. We could tell where we have been
over the last many weeks. We could recount all kinds of
things, but what could we tell about your promises? What could
we tell about your truth? What can we tell you about our
obedience, our marching orders? And so, Lord, we want to repent
for not being diligent and filling our treasure. And we pray that
you would put a right spirit, a new spirit within our hearts
now so that we would love what you love and live the way you
would have us live. Help us to hate what is evil,
to hold fast to that which is good. Help us to center our lives
around the King in the church through the outpost of heaven,
which you have given us so that what’s on the inside will change.
And then what’s on the outside will be so different to the world
that we can tell of Jesus and the glory of the gospel and be
faithful and effective witnesses. Lord, this is no small thing.
So we ask for your help and your grace. and we ask for your blessing
in Christ’s name, amen. We want to respond to God’s goodness
as we stand and sing together number 413, revive thy work,
oh Lord.