The Two Trees
A Manual for Kingdom Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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I’m going to admit something to you all this morning that may come as something of a shock to you, and I will only admit this here to you now because my wife is not in the room. And if any of you mentions this to her later on, I will firmly deny it.
Here goes: I have, on some rare and unusual occasions in my life, been wrong.
Let me give you a few moments to catch your breath. And if any of you feel now that you need counseling because I’ve shaken up your worldview, I understand, and I can give you the names of some good counselors who can help you make sense of the world in light of this truth that I’ve just shared.
Yes, I have very occasionally been wrong. Let me tell you about one of those times.
About 15 years ago, I was working as a reporter at The Tidewater News in Franklin. We had a small break room in the back of the building, where a few of us would gather for lunch sometimes.
It’s an odd and somewhat depressing fortress of a building with very few windows, and what windows there are in it are tall and narrow slits of glass about eight inches across.
The little table where we would eat our lunch in the break room was set next to one of those windows, and as a few of us sat there one day, we noticed a vine growing up along the outside of that window.
We began to talk that day about what kind of vine it was. Several options were floated, but the prime candidates were Virginia creeper and poison ivy. Most of the folks were convinced that it was poison ivy. I, however, was certain that it was Virginia creeper.
We sat there debating it for much of our lunch break, and as with so many polarized debates of our time, neither side was backing down from its position.
“I’m telling you, it’s NOT poison ivy,” I said with all the authority I could muster. “I’m very allergic to poison ivy, and I know very well what it looks like.”
And then came the challenge.
“Well, if you’re so sure it’s not poison ivy, why don’t you go out there and rub it on yourself?”
Well, here’s the thing: When someone has challenged your authority on some matter in such a direct way, there’s nothing you can do but rise to the challenge and make sure that everyone knows who was right.
So, I went outside, stood at the window where everyone could see me, pulled down part of the vine and then rubbed some of those leaves all over my face.
I don’t recall what those folks said to me when I came back inside that day, but I DO recall how they all laughed the next day, when I came into the office with a poison ivy rash all over my face.
I can tell you that I am much more informed today about what poison ivy looks like than I was then. I’ve studied the photos and read the material, and now I know exactly what to look for. I’m also a little bit wiser about the kinds of things I rub on my face.
Today, as we continue our look at Jesus’ four warnings in the conclusion of His Sermon on the Mount, we’re going to see that those who would follow Christ in faith must likewise be wise about the teaching we allow ourselves to be exposed to.
Turn with me to Matthew 7, verse 15, and let’s hear what Jesus had to say about false teachers in this portion of the conclusion of His Sermon on the Mount.
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “So then, you will know them by their fruits.
Now, it’s not a coincidence that this passage follows the passage we studied last week about the wide road that leads to destruction and the narrow road that leads to life.
You see, there are people along both roads who make it their business to try to direct people onto one path or the other. And the thing is that sometimes it can be hard to tell those people apart.
Jesus said as much when he said that false prophets would come to us in sheep’s clothing. They would come into the flock looking like Christians, talking like Christians, and even acting like Christians, but inside they would be ravenous wolves.
Now, the Greek word that’s translated as “ravenous” here means “robbers” or “swindlers” in its noun form.
So, the sense is that these wolves in sheep’s clothing are people who, knowingly or sometimes unknowingly, are robbing people from the kingdom of heaven, swindling them out of the inheritance they could have as adopted sons and daughters of God.
And I want you to note that Jesus presents their appearance as a certainty, not as a possibility. Indeed, He warned elsewhere that these ravenous wolves — these false prophets — were already at work, even as He preached to and taught the people in and around Jerusalem during his three-year ministry.
And so, we have two warnings about such teachers. First, they are liars, and second, they are dangerous.
They are liars, because they present some message that is in opposition to the message revealed by Jesus, who is “the way, the TRUTH, and the life.”
Remember what I said last week about the billboards along the wide road that leads to destruction?
These are the signs that say things like “There is no such thing as hell,” or “There is no such thing as an eternal soul; when you die, you die, and that’s it,” or “There is no such thing as objective truth; everybody must determine for themselves their own truth,” or “All paths lead to heaven.”
These are the lies of the devil, and they are in direct opposition to the truth of Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me.”
The world will tell you that you don’t really have to think about eternal things, because we’re all just destined for the ground.
And for those who sense that there’s something more than these mortal lives we lead, the world has answers for them, too: Everybody — or at least most people — are basically good, and we’ll all wind up in some version of heaven in the end, anyway.
But these are the lies of the devil, and the danger they represent is that they lead people down that wide and easy road that leads to destruction.
What Jesus tells us are hard truths. Each one of us has an immortal soul, and each one of us is corrupted by sin, and our sins are more sinful than we ever will admit or even realize, because we were made to reflect the perfect and holy character of the God who created us in His image.
What Jesus tells us in the words of the psalmist is this:
The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” They are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; There is no one who does good. God has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there is anyone who understands, Who seeks after God. Every one of them has turned aside; together they have become corrupt; There is no one who does good, not even one.
We have all turned away from God in our sins, great and small. There is none of us who is good. None of us is worthy to stand before God in our own righteousness. None of us has done or can do anything to merit God’s favor. Each one of us is spiritually bankrupt.
But Jesus also tells us this truth:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who recognize that they are spiritually bankrupt, that they have no rightful standing before God, that they do not merit God’s favor, because when they understand this, they can finally look past all the billboards full of lies and see the truth of those one way signs on the narrow path.
They can finally see that their one way into heaven is through Jesus, the Son of God, sent to earth to live the completely righteous life that we could never live, to die on a cross and pay the price for sin that we could never pay, and to be raised from the dead to give life to those who were otherwise dead in their trespasses against God — those who put their faith in Him that He IS the Son of God and that his life, death, burial, and resurrection provide the ONLY means for us to be reconciled with God.
This is the narrow way the demonically inspired false prophets of this world hope you will not find. This was the narrow way the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time crucified Him for proclaiming.
And make no mistake: These false prophets are still spewing their lies even today. We don’t know them as scribes and Pharisees. We know them as the scientists who tell us there must not be a God, because they’ve never seen Him.
We know them as politicians who promise to solve the world’s problems with their political agendas. We know them as the titans of industry who promise to build heaven on earth — or on Mars.
We know them as the advertisers who promise you happiness and contentment if you’ll only buy their products and who then turn around next year and tell you that you’ll REALLY be happy and content if you buy this year’s new and improved version of those same products.
And what was true of the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ time is often true of those who tell us these lies today: They believe their own lies, and that makes them even more dangerous.
The scribes and Pharisees believed they were good people who deserved a relationship with God because of all their religious rituals. They believed their standing in the community as good and upright citizens made them worthy of God’s favor. They believed the wealth they had gained was evidence of God’s blessing upon them.
But Jesus called them “whitewashed tombs,” beautiful and pure on the outside, but inside, “full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.” Jesus told them not to lean on their heritage or their standing in the community, but to “bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Jesus told them, as He tells us today, “you cannot serve God and Mammon.” You cannot love God and love money.
The grave danger that the lies of the scribes and Pharisees represented was the same as the grave danger represented by the lies of today’s false prophets.
Their lies keep the lost world, which is already turned away from God, from realizing how desperately it needs to turn TO God.
Their lies keep people from recognizing that the wide gate they are entering is actually the gaping maw of hell itself.
And if you are on that wide path — if you have gone through your life believing the lies that say there is no God, there is no hell, and there is no reason for you to worry about your eternal soul — then my desperate plea to YOU is for you to open your heart to the truth of Jesus Christ.
He has promised that if you will repent of your sins and trust in Him and His sacrifice on your behalf that He will place you on the narrow path to eternal life — life in everlasting fellowship with Him and with His Father through the Holy Spirit.
That was the message Jesus had for the crowds who had gathered around Him as He preached this Sermon on the Mount. But when He began this message, Jesus was talking only to His disciples, to those who already were following Him in some measure of faith.
And this passage we have looked at today had a special significance for them, because the false prophets — the ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing — would present a special danger to the church that consisted of Jesus’ followers, both then and now.
You see, Satan doesn’t give up on any of us when we place our faith in Jesus. If you have followed Jesus in true faith, there is nothing the devil can do — and, in fact, nothing you can do — to make you lose your salvation.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus said:
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. “I and the Father are one.”
So, not even the most enticing lies of the devil are able to take a true Christian off the narrow path that leads to eternal life and place him on the wide path that leads to destruction.
But his lies CAN cause you to detour from that narrow path along the way. They can cause you to step out of fellowship with God in Christ Jesus. They can cause you to do and say things that damage to your witness for Christ. They can cause you to adopt false beliefs that keep others from leaving the wide path and committing themselves to the narrow path of truth.
And this is where the rest of today’s passage becomes so important for followers of Christ.
If we are to be led along the narrow path, rather than MISlED onto detours, we have to be people who can distinguish the truth from lies. We have to recognize false teaching when we hear. We have to discern between teachers of truth and false prophets.
And this isn’t easy, because the wolves look for all the world just like sheep. They call themselves Christians. They use the language and the terminology of Christians. Often, they even do the good things that Christians are called to do.
And so, Jesus shifts to a different metaphor, and He begins talking about trees. And the thing about trees is that, however hard it might be to tell one tree from another in the winter, when all the leaves have fallen and it stands there barren, when the spring comes and that tree begins to bear fruit, identification becomes much easier.
We have a tree in the corner of our back garden at home that has begun to lose its leaves. Soon, it’ll be just sticks coming up out of the ground. But in the spring, the leaves will come back, and by mid-summer, we’ll see fruit hanging from its branches, and it’ll be clear that it’s a fig tree.
But even then, when the figs are brown and ripe, it will take careful inspection to make sure they’re good for eating. Figs have a nasty habit of hiding beetles and wasps on the sides you can’t see, so it’s important to look very closely before you pick them.
The same thing is true of those who profess to be teaching Christian doctrine.
Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, it is vitally important that you be discerning about where and from whom you learn about the faith.
There are many good Christian writers and preachers and teachers, and I encourage you to fill yourselves with their teaching.
I am a pastor not just because of my time in seminary or because of the pastors who shepherded me, but also, in part, because of the good teaching I heard on Christian radio stations and read in Christian books.
But not every book you will find in the Christian book section or even in the Christian book store teaches truth. And not every preacher you hear on the radio or see on television preaches truth.
How can you tell the difference? John Stott suggests five standards by which to measure a teacher — character, conduct, message, motives, and influence — and he says that the fruits of these standards take some time to inspect. [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 201.]
When looking at character, do you see the character of Jesus reflected in the fruits of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control?
When looking at conduct, do you see someone reflecting the meekness and gentleness of Jesus, or do you see someone caught up in the works of the flesh, someone who is caught up in impurity, jealousy and self-indulgence?
When you consider the message, does it reflect the counsel of the whole Bible? Does it describe the God whose perfect love includes His rightful wrath against sinners?
This is the standard whose fruit should be easiest for Christians to inspect, because we have God’s word readily available to use as a measuring stick.
John Calvin said, “All doctrines must be brought to the Word of God as the standard,” for “in judging of false prophets the rule of faith [the Bible] holds chief place.” [Commentary on a harmony of the evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, I, by John Calvin (1558: translated by William Pringle, 1845: Eerdmans, n.d., 365.)
Think of the Bereans from Acts, chapter 17:
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
They heard the message of Paul, and they responded by going back to the Scriptures to check out what he had said.
Do you go back to the Bible after you’ve heard my Sunday sermons to make sure that I’m not teaching false doctrine? Do you do that when you’ve heard some “Christian” preacher on the radio or read some pop-culture “Christian” book? You should!
Then, there’s the standard of motives. When you examine the motives of some Christian teacher, do you find that they are teaching to bring God glory or to bring glory to themselves?
And finally, there is the standard of influence. What effect does this teaching have on the teacher’s followers? Does it result in divisiveness or unity? Does it encourage them to love their enemies or does it cause them to treat them with bitterness and contempt? Does it lead them into a deeper love of God or a deeper love of self?
“If we care for God’s truth and for God’s church,” Stott writes, “we must take Christ’s warning seriously. He and his apostles place the responsibility for the church’s doctrinal purity partly upon the shoulders of Christian leaders ..., but also and especially upon each congregation.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 203.]
There’s a children’s song many of you may have learned long ago that was written for a different application, but a couple of its lines can be helpful to us as we consider how to be careful about inspecting fruits to discern good trees from bad trees.
You may remember it: Oh, be careful, little eyes, what you see....
Be careful, little eyes, and be careful little ears, and be careful little hands. Sometimes, what looks like harmless Virginia creeper is actually dangerous poison ivy.
Beware of the lies. Don’t allow yourself to be detoured from the narrow path.Be wise, and be discerning. There are wolves out there.