Please be seated church good morning forward you're going to
ask you to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 6 verses 43 to 45.
You're using the Bibles found underneath some of the chairs in
the main odd here it's page 915 or you can download the Bible
app. What a great tool that is.
You can get all the versions of the Bible in all sorts of
languages. It's absolutely free.
You can download it on your phone.
But we're in Luke chapter 6, verse 43 to 45.
What a great morning it's been this morning, man.
It's so good to worship together as God's people, to be rooted
and reminded of these great truths that we've been singing
together, and then to celebrate these baptisms.
What a joy that is to use the language of our text today.
What those people who are being baptized were saying was this,
that Jesus has given them a different route and that's
creating different fruit. That's what I want to talk about
today. So if this is your first time
with us, man, we're so glad that you're here.
Maybe you're just looking for a church to call your own and, and
to make your home. We'd love this to be the place
for you. Maybe you're here today and
you're exploring faith. You heard some of the stories of
people just exploring faith and finding Jesus.
Maybe you're on that journey of exploring faith.
We're glad that you're here. Maybe you don't know what you
believe about God. Maybe somebody's dragged you
along because they got baptized today and deep down there, like,
hey, this is what's changed my life.
I would love to see it change your life.
And whether you knew that or not, that's why they brought you
along and they wanted you to be here to witness what's going on
in their life. No matter who you are, no matter
where you've been, no matter where you're coming from.
I just want you to know this, we love the fact that you're here
and just relax right now because I know it's nerve wracking.
You come into church, maybe you haven't been in church for a
long time or never been in church.
You're like, what's this guy going to do?
I'm not going to ask you for money right now so you can let
go of your wallet. I mean, I'm not here to guilt
you. I, I don't want you to walk out
of here just feeling all uncomfortable.
What I want to do this morning is this.
I want us to see how the baptisms that we experienced and
the words that Jesus are going to speak today, they tell the
same story. So we've been in this section of
scripture in the in the book of Luke that's called the Sermon on
the plain. Jesus has given this extended
teaching about what it looks like for people to follow him
and how different life becomes. And there's this huge crowd
that's gathered and he's just given this consistent message.
And hopefully you've seen it if you've been walking with us,
that if you're going to follow Jesus, life is going to be
different in all sorts of different ways that we've talked
about. And so today Jesus is kind of,
we're in the second to last week of this.
Jesus is bringing it all to a head.
And he's saying that ultimately, all these differences that he's
been speaking to the crowd in front of them that we are
receiving today as we walk through his word are rooted in
the fact that they come out of a heart that's been made
different. And the big idea that's going to
kind of undergird not only everything that we're talking
about today, but everything that we've talked about thus far is
this, that the fruit of your life will always reveal the root
of your heart. The fruit of your life will
always reveal the root of your heart.
So let's let's walk through these verses together.
Luke 643 to 45 encourage you to read these words as I walk
through them, read along with me.
This is the words of Jesus. Jesus is a good tree doesn't
produce bad fruit. On the other hand, a bad tree
doesn't produce good fruit, for each tree is known by its own
fruit. Figs aren't gathered from thorn
bushes, grapes picked from a Bramble Bush.
No, a good person produces good out of the good stored up in his
heart. An evil person produces evil out
of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from
the overflow of the heart. Here's the first thing that I
want you to see today. You can't produce good fruit
from a bad root. That's that's what Jesus starts
off by saying. He uses this really obvious, It
seems like a of course Jesus type of illustration, right?
You don't need a commentary for this.
You don't need any type of theology degree.
You don't need to be a horticulturalist to understand
the reality that you can't produce good fruit from a bad
root. And I love this about Jesus.
I love the fact, see anybody can make a simple thing and make it
complex. Lots of people like to sound
smart by taking simple things and making them complex.
One of the things I love about Jesus is Jesus takes really deep
truths and makes them so simple and approachable for us, right?
He's just saying this. Healthy tree, healthy fruit,
unhealthy tree, unhealthy fruit. Jesus's primary concern here,
though, is not that we understand horticulture.
It's about teaching us about some realities of the human
condition. And he's saying this, what your
life will eventually reveal is what you're rooted in.
Your life always reveals through your actions, your words, your
deeds, what you're rooted in. And you can fake it for a little
while, right? You can fool people for a little
while, you can Polish yourself up for the right situations, you
can behave well in public for a bit, you can keep up an image
for a while. But eventually, inevitably,
inescapably, fruit shows up. Because the fruit of your life
will always reveal the root of your heart.
See if you're rooted in pride. Eventually, it'll show up in
your relationships. Eventually, you'll be in a
relationship with people. And the people who are closest
to you, they often see this first, right?
Like they'll know that you're the person who's quick to
criticize you Got a critical heart.
Why is that? Because you have a root of
pride. You'll be a person who struggles
to grant forgiveness because you're too proud.
I mean, you don't have to grant forgiveness if you never ask for
forgiveness, right? If you're rooted in insecurity,
it eventually shows up in your decisions.
It'll show up in your people pleasing behaviors, or it'll
show up in your inability to make a decision.
The fact that you're constantly paralyzed if you're in rooted in
bitterness, I mean you, we've, we've all, we, we all know the
people around us in our lives who have a root of bitterness
has grown up because it just flows out of their tone, right?
It's, it's just their tone drips with a sense of bitterness, envy
at other people. If you're rooted in fear, it
comes out in your reactions. You will be an anxious or angry
person. By the way, both of those things
tend to be rooted in fear, anger, and anxiousness.
If you're rooted in selfishness, it, it shows up in your bank
account, in your bank statement. It shows up in the way that you
invest your time in things or don't invest your time in
things. Because the fruit of your life
will always, at the end of the day, reveal the root of your
heart. You can't hide it forever.
So many of us try and fix ourselves by starting at the
wrong end. We started trying to fix
ourselves by focusing on the fruit.
We're like. We're like a gardener going out
and seeing the the tree is sick and taking good fruit out of our
fridge and stapling it on to the tree.
We try and fix the problem by stapling some fruit on, but that
doesn't make the tree healthy and eventually what happens?
The staples fall out, the fruit falls off, and you see once
again clearly the tree is sick. You can fool people for a while,
but you can't fix the problem by stapling fruit on a tree.
For some of you, This is why your spiritual life feels so
exhausting, because the entirety of everything that you have been
doing is just trying to fix the fruit.
You just keep on trying to staple stuff on and it falls
off. Then you're going to get more
fruit. You got to staple it on.
It's exhausting work. A tree doesn't work itself up
like that. The tree bears fruit from its
roots. Like an apple tree doesn't have
to say, I got to try really hard to make apples.
Apples are what come off of apple trees.
You need to stop trying to produce fruit and instead let
Jesus transform the root. The whole sermon on the plane
Jesus is describing what happens when someone is rooted in him.
This is so important if you're going to understand this passage
here in all of Scripture, right. He so he said, like, if if
you're rooted in me, you're going to produce a different
type of love where you even are able to love your enemies.
You can't work that up in you. You're going to you'd have a
different way about you and your ability to forgive.
It's going to be different the way that you treat people who
hurt you. It's going to be different the
way that you look at other people.
You're not going to look at other people through a lens of
judgement and and a critical lens.
Your heart's going to be different when it comes to
generosity because we're going to see your speech is going to
be different. And you can't do this through
just sheer force of will. I'm just telling you, you will
get exhausted and you will give up or everybody will see that
you're a fraud sooner or later. If you truly want to change your
fruit, you got to change your root.
You can't produce good fruit from a bad root.
Then he says this. He says in verse 44, each tree
is known by its own fruit. Figs aren't gathered from thorn
bushes or grapes picked from a Bramble Bush.
The second thing Jesus wants us to see is that your fruit shows
what you're rooted in. See, as Jesus is extending this
metaphor, he's extending the illustration in the point.
He's saying if you want to know what type of tree a tree really
is, check out the fruit that grows.
That's how you find it out, Don't You don't ask the tree
what the tree claims to be. You don't.
You don't look for a label on the ground somewhere that's
affixed to the tree. It's it's not about what the
tree intends to be. What a tree ultimately is is
revealed by the fruit that comes off of it.
Fruit always tells the truth. You you say?
So I'm like, I believe in God. Wonderful.
I'm a spiritual person. Great.
I go to church when I can, if I can make it.
Sometimes I even go to a discipleship group.
If I'm really, really, really spiritual, I go to an equipped
class. I've got one of those Christian
T-shirts that I put on from time to time that Derek showed a
couple weeks back. I haven't worn it since because
I felt embarrassed. I got a Jesus fish on my back.
I've memorized all sorts of scriptures.
All great. That's wonderful.
But Jesus says, what's the fruit?
Because a thorn Bush, it can't grow figs.
A Bramble Bush, it can't grow grapes.
A heart that lacks deep faith is going to struggle to show deep
peace. A heart that hasn't experienced
forgiveness at the end of the day is going to run out of the
ability to forgive these as Jesus has walked through the
things that should be true of his followers.
Again, that radical love for enemies.
This is Jeremy talked about last week.
Just a heart for for justice and for those who are oppressed to
be met with justice and kindness and love.
Hearts filled with mercy and generosity.
Humility instead of hypocrisy. Those are not tasks that Jesus
is giving. They're traits that show up when
your heart gets transformed. He's listing fruits that grow
out of a new heart. Again, Jesus doesn't say each
tree is known by its intentions or each tree is known by the
rightness of its theological beliefs.
Let me ask you a question. If you came to a tree and it had
a label on it that said orange tree but there was a whole bunch
of bananas growing off of it, would you assume the tree was
wrong in its fruit or the OR the sign was wrong on the tree?
That's what Jesus is saying. Each tree is ultimately known by
its fruits. Your fruit will always show at
the end of the day what you're rooted in.
No matter what label you want to put on yourself, if you're
rooted in Christ, it should end up showing up in your fruit.
It doesn't happen. All the ones.
You don't go out to a tree all at once and see all the fruit.
One day there was no fruit. Now there's all fruit.
It takes time. God works on us.
But when the root gets changed, the fruit begins to change.
And if the label isn't matching the fruit, the problem is not
the fruit, it's the label. Verse 45 A good person produces
good out of the good stored up in his heart.
An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his
heart. That's what what he's saying is
this. What takes root in your heart
will bear fruit in your life. See Jesus now taking what has
been implicit in this illustration He's given.
He's getting us real explicit. He's moving from the orchard to
our souls. He says, your heart, my heart,
it's like soil. Whatever takes root in that soil
and the quality of the soil that's there with the root
that's in it will determine and will bear fruit right here in
the here and now. So what takes root in your heart
will bear fruit in your life again if you allow bitterness
and, and, and the Bible even talks about this thing called a
root of bitterness that just works its way down into our
hearts and our souls. And when that bitter root gets
rooted, man, it produces nasty fruit.
When fear gets rooted in our heart produces anxiety.
Lack of peace. When shame.
Man, I've just seen this so many times that I'm so sick of seeing
this because I think Satan just uses shame in powerful ways that
so many of us don't understand. When shame takes root in your
heart, When you see yourself through the mirror of shame,
isolation is what happens, and people run away from community
right when they need it the most.
When pride takes root in our heart, sense of entitlement,
even anger at God when things don't go my way takes root.
Roots never stay hidden forever. They start down there in the
ground under the soil, but sooner or later as that root
sits there, it puts shoots up. At some point in due season, we
see what comes out. But the flip side is also true.
And this is what Jesus says here, right?
Because it's not just a bad root that takes root and bears
Bratford, but he says, no, there's also this other reality.
This is a good news reality that the good news, the truth of God,
goodness can take root. The gospel can take root in a
life, and when the good news takes fruit, good fruit begins
to bear. Like the gospel.
At its core is this. We talked about this a couple
weeks ago, Romans 5/8 that God proved his own love for us in
this. While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. I don't know how to tell you how
good that news is. It is such good news, and when
you believe that to be true, when when that truth starts to
take root and you begin to believe it in all these
different areas of your life, when you allow the truth of that
to take root, all sorts of things by the power of the Holy
Spirit begin to change. See when grace takes root in
your life. When you realize I didn't earn
my salvation. God proved His love for me and
this there was nothing good about me, and he ran towards me
to save me and rescue me. When that's true in your life,
when you begin to believe that in all these different parts of
your life, you know what gross gratitude grows.
Man, God is so good to me. He's so kind, He's done so much.
I deserve nothing and he gave me everything.
How could you not grow in gratitude?
When love takes root, When you understand man, God loved you at
your worst while you were a Sinner, Not just the sins you
had committed, but all the sins you're going to commit still,
and he ran towards you instead of away from you.
Then instead of shame taking root, instead this, this
beautiful reality of confession within the context of community
where we can support each other and love each other, that takes
root. When faith takes root, when you
have roots going down that really believe that Jesus saved
me and if he did the saving, there's nothing I can undo
because this isn't about me, it's not about my works.
Then you know what grows up in you?
Peace and confidence. Because you know nothing can
take you away from God, and if He's promised you a future with
Him forever in heaven, He'll deliver that you can't get away
from it because He's running after you to pull you back.
A new heart and new truths produce a new root and new
fruits. The best way to test?
Because we're like, what? It's really hard to know
sometimes, right? What's in US until sometimes
it's too late because we've really done some damage.
How would we test what is inside of us?
What what's taking root? Jesus says, let me tell you,
it's your words. It's verse 45.
A person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart
and evil produce person produces evil out of the evil stored up
in his heart. And then he says this, for his
mouth speaks from the overflow of his heart.
You want to know what's going on in your heart, in here inside
you. Watch your words because your
words are the ripened fruit of your rooted heart.
See, up to this point, Jesus has shown us right.
What you're rooted in will eventually come out of you.
Your fruit shows what you're rooted in, and what takes root
in your heart will bear fruit in your life.
And now he says, if you want to see your fruit clearly, if you
want to see what that root is that's in there, listen to your
words because your words are the right fruit that shows what's
truly rooted in your heart. He's saying this.
He's saying your words. My words, they're a loudspeaker.
I think a lot of us, we wonder we, we come to these points,
something happens in our life and all of a sudden we just lose
it on somebody, right? And we said, where did that come
from? How did that come out?
Why did I take that tone? Why was I so sharp?
Why? Why did I explode like that?
I got a cup here. If somebody bumped into me in
this moment and hit my arm, what would come out of this cup?
Whatever is already in it. Whatever is already in the cup,
something that's not in here can't come out.
What comes out when I get bumped is what's already in it.
What comes out of me when life bumps up against me, when
somebody rubs up against me wrong, when somebody makes me
angry. No, they didn't make me angry or
anxious. I was angry and anxious and they
bumped into me and it came out. See, Jesus says what's in you is
what comes out of you. What's in you is what shoots out
of your mouth. So when when condescending words
slide out of your mouth, when demeaning words that tear
somebody else come out of your mouth, it's because you got a
root of pride already in your heart.
That's what's in you. Somebody's not put it into you.
It is in you. It's come out of you when when
angry words, when rage filled words.
Guys, I'm talking to you especially man.
So many men struggle with anger. And as long as you think that
those words that came out of you, those angry words are
ultimately the result of somebody else, you won't ever
get to the root of the problem. Nobody made you angry.
You have an anxious or an entitled heart.
Somebody bumped into you and wrecked the fact that you're not
the center of the universe, and out of you spilled the rage that
came with that. If you struggle with lying,
struggle with telling the truth, it's because maybe you have an
insecure heart. So you've got to create an
image. You've got to craft an image
that will make people think something about you.
Or you've got to say lie so you don't set somebody else off
because they might think poorly of you.
Or maybe you've got a fearful heart that people would actually
see you for who you really are, and so you craft stories.
Maybe you've got a striving heart where you want to be
somebody else and you want to get ahead, so you try and
deceive your way there. But the issue is there's
something in your heart that's causing the lies.
Our words are the ripened fruit of our rooted heart.
Your mouth will eventually tell the truth about what you're
rooted in and where the roots go.
So if you want to dive down into your heart, start with your
mouth. But the good news again, it's
just as real when grace takes root.
When, when, When you allow the truth of God's grace to to
continue to change your heart. Then words of gratitude and
appreciation, instead of criticism and judgement grow.
When confidence takes root, you don't have to puff yourself up
or tear others down. Then words of encouragement take
root or take or grow as love takes root in your heart.
Words of care and compassion for others grow when humility takes
root. It's amazing how much more
patient our words get because when Jesus takes root, Jesus
like words grow. Words aren't the cause of the
problem. Words are the evidence of the
root. So how do you change the fruit?
You change the root. If your words are going to
change, if your actions are going to be transformed, then we
need to be changed from the inside out, not the outside in.
To produce fruit we have to be made new.
We need new hearts, we need a new route, and that starts with
allowing Jesus to make you new, to change your heart, to give
you a new heart inside. 2nd Corinthians 517 to 18 says,
therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away, the new has come.
Everything is from God. God does it all who has
reconciled us to himself through Christ.
That's how things begin to change when we begin to believe
that truth, that Jesus alone can make me new.
And we place our faith in the fact that Jesus, when he died on
the cross, all of those bitter, angry, awful roots, they get
nailed to the cross. Jesus puts them to death on the
cross. So that's the old us now.
And He gives us a new heart that's been transformed by His
grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We choose to believe that my sin was nailed and put to death with
Christ, so I get to live in Christ with Christ.
That's the first step. You've never come to a point
where you have believed that your sin can't get fixed by you.
Stapling new fruit on your sin can only get fixed by trusting
in Jesus Christ and rooting yourself down deep in the truth
that He saved you, He rescued you, He paid the price and
you're righteous through him and not of yourself.
You can do that today. Just call out to him and say,
Jesus, I believe I'm done trying on my own.
I'm done working this trying to staple fruit on myself all the
time. Would you come in and make me
new? And that's what he does by the
power of the Holy Spirit. That's the gospel.
But Christians, we don't move on from the gospel.
We root ourselves in it. I think so many Christians think
I received the gospel is true. Now give me all the stuff to do
as if that's maturity. That is not maturity.
Maturity is figuring out where you still don't, your heart
still struggling to believe the gospel, and allowing the gospel
to get real in those areas, like those of you who are baptized
today. The rest of the journey is
figuring out how to apply the truth that you confessed while
you were in that tank to all the different areas of your life.
That's what it looks like, letting what you confess and
Jesus has already done in your life through the cross work its
way out in all of these areas, letting the truth of that sink
down deep. Followers of Jesus, what's the
fruit of your life? Especially the words of your
mouth, because the words of your mouth are proclaiming where
there's still work to be done in changing your heart to believe
the gospel to be true. A good person produces good
fruit out of the good stored up in his heart.
Are you storing up the truths of Scripture so the Holy Spirit can
bring those to mind and and can bring new fruit out of it?
Don't settle for stapled fruit, Church.
Don't settle for stapled fruit. This is not a call to try
harder. This is not about you
manufacturing fruit in your life.
You know, we don't participate in all these things, these
spiritual disciplines. We don't participate in reading
the Word of God and praying and fasting and coming and
worshipping together collectively.
We don't participate in them to put fruit on ourself.
We participate in them so that God can produce new fruit in us
through our participation. The stuff, the disciplines,
they're not the fruit. They're they're the nourishment
we give so that Jesus can work the fruit.
Holy Spirit can work the fruit up.
The fruit of your life reveals the root of your heart.
To change the fruit, you got to change the root.
You need to, like we talked about at the beginning of this
fall, you need to abide. We're going to close with this
song Abide that we started singing back in September and
and I would just say as we sing this song, sing, sing the words,
but also just be calling out through the Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit. Are there are there roots in my
life that need to get fixed? What what's been what's been
taken hold in your heart? Just show him look, what in my
life needs to be pruned? Where do I need to believe
different truths and have a different route?
So I would bear different fruit and just ask Him to help you to
abide daily, deeply, desperately.
Because a different fruit always flows from a different route.
And a different route begins when you allow your heart to
begin to abide in Jesus and what He has done for you.
Let's sing.