By Their Fruits
Sermon on the Mount # 16

a sermon on Matthew 7.15-20
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


Two young men were sitting in a coffee house one day. Due to technical difficulties, the establishment’s Wi-Fi service was down. Unable to connect their laptop computers to the internet, they resorted to an old fashioned means of communication: They struck up a conversation.

Not long into it, the conversation took a religious turn when one man noticed the other had a fish sticker on his backpack. “Are you a Christian?” the first one asked the fellow with the fish. “Yes, I am,” the other answered. “That’s wonderful. I am too.” “Where do you go to church?” “Nowhere regularly. I have visited quiet a few, though.” “Me too.” “I found a pretty good preacher,” one of them said, “very reassuring. I’ve visited his church several times. He preaches grace. I still remember this illustration he used once: He said a lot of people think salvation is like scoring a touchdown in football. You have the ball, and you have to hold on to the ball and run and push and fight your way across the goal line into eternal life. But, he went on, those who think that are wrong. You are not the runner. You are the ball. Jesus is the one who carries you across the goal line. He said, ‘It’s not what you do for Jesus that puts you right with God; it’s what he has done for you.’ I find his sermons very assuring.”

“That’s good,” said the other man. “I recently heard a preacher I like. I found him inspiring. He was preaching about the narrow gate and the difficult path. He said, ‘Obedience is not optional. If you come to Jesus, you must be willing to do what he tells you. He demands and expects absolute loyalty and heartfelt obedience.’ He also said, ‘How we live matters. Our choices matter. Our actions and motivations matter. Following Jesus matters.’ I find his sermons very inspiring.”

“Sounds a bit heavy to me,” replied the first man, “I prefer a preacher who reminds me that Christ is sufficient. I am in his hands, and my destiny is assured because he has given his life for me. I know we ought to live for him, out of gratitude for what he has done. But give me the grace. I think my preacher is better.”

“What you say is true,” admitted the second man, “we are saved by grace, but we still have to make a decision for Christ. We still have to follow him and obey him. You cannot just say you are a Christian and then live however you want and expect Christ to let you get away with it. My preacher gives you the gospel with all its rough edges. I think he is better.”

And so, each man convinced he had the better preacher, they resolved on a way to settle their dispute. They would go together and hear each preacher twice. Then they would compare notes and see if a winner emerged. Agreed on this course of action, they got down to the business of which church to visit first. “Where is your preacher?” one asked. “Westminster Presbyterian, just down from the mall.” “What?!” the other one cried, astonished. “That’s impossible!” “Why?” said the first one. “Because that’s the church I visited too!”

You all realize this is a story I made up. What do preachers fantasize about? Two people arguing over who has the better preacher, and both preachers turn out to be me. How many of you saw where I was going with that? More importantly, how many of you have picked up the tension the story brings out? I preach grace … and I preach the necessity of obedience to Jesus. Why is this? Can I really have it both ways? Don’t I have to choose? If Christ is sufficient, how can my actions matter? If how I live matters, then it cannot all be in his hands, can it? What’s going on here?

I preach grace because I am as pessimistic as Jesus and Paul about the human condition. Without Christ we are dead in our sins. What can one who is dead do to be alive again? Nothing. Resurrection is an act of God. Apart from grace, we are hopelessly lost. That goes for everyone, from the holiest elder to the most notorious sinner. Plus, I believe in God’s grace. Christ died for us. He loves us. He does reach down, as Andrew Purves said at Springhill Presbyterian’s Festival of Faith last Monday evening, and grabs us by the scuff of the neck and picks us up and carries us home.

I preach the necessity of obedience because I believe in the power of grace. God not only washes away our guilt and pronounces us not guilty and thus fit for heaven. He also changes us and makes us fit for heaven. The washing takes place in an instant while the making us holy part lasts a lifetime—and isn’t finished until the resurrection. He does not zap us to make us holy, nor does he compel our obedience. But he does change us. And because we are changed, obedience becomes more than an unrealistic dream. It becomes a live possibility. And, yes, it does matter—because it is his work in us!

Perhaps this will help: Think of yourself as an orange tree (not the color, the fruit). Before you meet Christ, your branches are bare. Or your oranges are small and sour. Then Christ changes you. He makes you a healthy, thriving orange tree. What does a healthy orange tree produce? Oranges. Why? Because it thinks it ought to, so it works hard to produce oranges even though it hates oranges and finds it hard to make them? Because it feels guilty if it doesn’t? Because it is afraid not to? No. Because it is natural.

This, I think, is the main theme of our scripture reading, or at least what God wants us to find in it this morning. It is about the dangers of false prophets, but there is a deeper issue here that runs right though the Sermon on the Mount. You are put right with God … you gain abundant life now and eternal life after death … you enter God’s kingdom … how? Not by the law. Jesus has already told us in the Sermon on the Mount that the law does not go far enough. You may not kill your neighbor, but if you hate him, you are a sinner. To enter the kingdom your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. How is that possible? The heart matters, but how can you change your heart? You cannot. But Jesus can. So not by doing what the law requires. You cannot keep the law perfectly anyway. God’s law is good, but what it does not give is a way to obey it. Just knowing it is not enough. Not through the law, then. Also not by doing good deeds. Jesus warned about practicing your religion in a showy way. In our passage he warns against false prophets who come in sheep’s clothing. That is, they are good at religion. They say the right words. They do the right things. They look like sheep. They sound like sheep. They smell like sheep. But they are not sheep. If all it took were religion, they would be sheep. They are not. What do they lack? It goes back, like seemingly everything else in the Sermon on the Mount, to the heart. Their heart is not right. They bear evil fruit because their hearts are bad.

Not by law. Not by religion or good deeds. Also not by claiming faith. Next Sunday will be the 17th and final sermon in our series on the Sermon on the Mount. Many of you have expressed appreciation for this series, by the way; and I appreciate that; but I can only say it is easy to preach from such a powerful text. These are Jesus’ most important teachings about how to live as his disciples. All the really good stuff is there in the text. Next week, however, we get to what I consider the most terrifying passage in the entire Bible. Jesus warns, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” [Mt 7.21]. Can he really mean that our profession of faith is not enough? Clearly he does. How then can we know that we are saved? How can we be sure we are right with God? If it is not the law or good deeds or even standing in front of the church and making a profession of faith, what is it? Simply this: Jesus changes your heart.

Jesus changes your heart. See how it all comes together? Of course it is grace. It has to be. It is his work in you. Only Jesus can transform the human heart and open it to God. You can no more do this yourself than an oak tree can grow apples. It is grace. And because it is, what you believe and do matters. When Jesus changes you, you need to make a profession of faith. Your profession does not save you; Jesus does. But a result of his work in you is faith, and you need to stand up and say so—and be baptized if you have not been already. Also, when Jesus changes you, a new way of life opens before you, a life of love, holiness, and serving others in his name. So again, how you live matters. Your fruit matters. What would you say if your neighbor invited you over to see his glorious pear tree. He brags about this tree all the time. And when you go, you find a tall, green, beautiful tree. It does look for all the world like a pear tree. Only it doesn’t produce pears. Imagine next to it a scruffy little misshapen tree. This would be the pear tree Charlie Brown would buy and plant in his yard. Yet on each branch hang lovely, luscious pears. Which tree would you rather have? The beautiful tree says, “Lord, Lord”—claiming to be a pear tree, but does not do the will of the Father. That sort of tree gets cut down, Jesus says. How you live does matter.

I can explain this better by pointing to the people Jesus met. Think of his encounters with people in the gospels. Zacchaeus comes to mind. Remember Zacchaeus? He was a tax collector, which meant he collaborated with the Roman occupation and cheated his own people to get rich. Jesus called him down from a tree and invited himself to dinner at Zacchaeus’s house. That’s grace. Jesus changed his heart. That’s grace. Zacchaeus changed his ways, helped the poor, and returned his ill-gotten money. That’s fruit. Once Jesus changed his heart, Zacchaeus could no more keep his fortune and go on exploiting people than a cactus can grow grapes.

A lot of people who do not work hard in the texts of the New Testament like to set Jesus against Paul. Paul preached grace, they tell us. Jesus preached deeds. They point to Paul’s argument in Romans: Abraham believed God and so God considered him righteous. (Do the forget that Abraham’s faith led him to obey some bizarre commands from God?) Paul preached grace. Then they point to Jesus, his Sermon on the Mount, and his parables. What separates the sheep from the goats in the parable of judgment in Matthew 25? “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” [vv. 35-36]. Jesus said this business about the trees and the necessity of doing the will of his Father. Jesus preached deeds. These people fail to see the unity in Jesus and Paul. Salvation looks and happens the same way in Jesus’ ministry and Paul’s ministry. In both cases, Jesus changes hearts and new life begins.

Again, look at the gospels, all the people Jesus met and changed. Think of Nicodemus, who emerged slowly as a disciple. Think of the woman at the well, who right away told others. Then look at Paul’s own life, how Jesus changed him. Paul was already zealous for God, but Jesus changed not just his beliefs (bringing him to faith in Jesus) but also his actions. Just one example: Paul the Pharisee would never have eaten meals with Gentiles. Paul the Christian insisted on it. Why? Because God loved Gentiles too.

When Paul wrote to his converts, he emphasized the importance of right beliefs and living—all the while acknowledging that the whole thing depends on Jesus’ work in a person’s heart. Romans 8.10-13: “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Ephesians 2.8-9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

I could go on, but you see my point. Throughout the New Testament we find the same brilliant paradox: We are saved by grace; and our choices, beliefs, and way of life matter. Jesus changes our hearts. That is salvation. Everything flows from that. Fruit grows naturally on a good fruit tree. The Christian life grows naturally out of a heart where Jesus has taken up residence.

I should explain, by the way, that when I say heart I do not mean your emotions as opposed to your thoughts and reasoning. I mean it in the biblical sense of everything from reason to feelings, including your will. Paul talked about a transformed mind and having the mind of Christ. I am talking about the same thing using the word heart. Our culture makes a distinction between mind and heart that Jesus does not make when he takes hold of us and begins to do his work. He changes everything.

I wonder what our two coffee house groupies would think of this sermon. Is it possible to be reassuring and inspiring at the same time? It must be. I hope I have given you assurance about your salvation and future hope. If you have faith in Jesus Christ, you are in his hands and he will not let you go. At the same time, I hope you have been inspired to live like the child of God Jesus has made you to be.

Let us accompany our friends from the coffee house on one last journey. United by their admiration of my preaching, they become friends. Before long, one gets the other involved with a soup kitchen feeding the homeless. There they make some new friends, and as they are cleaning up one evening after another successful meal, the group begins to talk about why they come to serve the homeless.

One young woman says she is there because God expects us to do good deeds, and she believes her chances of getting to heaven improve because of them. How much is enough? She doesn’t know. She just wants to do what she can and hope God’s grace will make up the difference.

A young man confesses he is there because he wants to be the kind of person who helps others and gives back to his community. He wants a reputation for doing good. What others think of him is important. The people in his church and peer group are the socially-conscious type. He likes them and wants to fit in.

Another young man admits he is there because of guilt. He feels guilt that he has so much when others have so little. He feels guilty for some things he has done and wants to make up for it if he can. He feels guilty when he doesn’t do this sort of thing because as Christians we are supposed to.

One young woman, asked why she serves, says simply, “I love Jesus. I love his people. I love the people he loves.”

Now, these are just a few of the many reasons people could give for helping others. In reality, our motivations are complex and often unclear even to us. But for the purposes of this exercise, I had to reduce them to these few, distinct motivations: earning favor with God, impressing other people, guilt, and love. All these people are doing something good to help others. My question is: Which of them would you want to be? Which of them are you?

Why do you live the way you do? Why come to worship? Why practice your faith? Why serve and volunteer? Are you insecure about your standing before God? Are you trying to be someone you are not? Is it guilt? Jesus sets you free from all those things. Every worry, every anxiety, he takes away. He sets you free. How beautiful that word is: free. Free to live out of love for God and the people he loves. It is a better way to live. If you do not know this freedom, you have not because you ask not. Jesus can change your heart, and you will bear fruit.

In conclusion, one does not enter the kingdom of God by keeping the law, practicing religion, or claiming to believe. Jesus must enter and transform the heart. Then the fruits will be good. Amen.
rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
July 15, 2007