Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on August 11, 2024
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Audio Transcript
We had a wonderful float in the parade yesterday. We gave out 150 church flyers with invitation to Awana and to Vacation Bible School. So I wanted us to take time today to pray for those that are working this week in vbs, that God will be preparing hearts and that he will bring children that need to hear the Gospel. So if you are helping out in Vacation Bible School anyway this week, or if you helped out on the float, would you please stand up so we can pray for you?
Don’t be shy.
Yeah, Tom, you drove the truck, you count. Okay, y’ all can sit down. Let’s just have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank youk for the freedom and the opportunity that we have to present the Gospel to our community through Vacation Bible School and through Awana. We thank you for the blessing that you have entrusted us with so many children that come to these things, Father, to hear your word.
We thank you especially for those in our church that have dedicated themselves to working. We ask that you would grant health this week, that you would grant a safe environment, that you would surround our church, Father, that your Holy Spirit might permeate hearts and speak to them about the Gospel. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. If you take your Bibles now, we’re going to be in Luke chapter six 43 through 45.
And I made a grammar boo boo up there. It’s supposed to say, are you a good tree or a bad tree? That’s my fault. I do my PowerPoint. So if you ever see a problem, don’t complain to Darla.
She doesn’t make the mistakes in the PowerPoint. It’s all my doing. Okay. Luke, chapter six, verses 43 through 45. We love to have you turn it in your Bible with us, but we do have it up on the screen for your convenience.
Jesus said, 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 or grapes picked from from a bramble bush. 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. May we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word as we look at it today. May it instruct our lives and how we are to live them in such a way that we honor Christ more fully, but also give us some understanding that we might be able to share with others the Gospel. And your plan for us, that we might have hope of life eternal with you, that begins here in this life.
Now, in Jesus name we pray. Amen. You might read these verses and say, yes, I understand that good trees produce good fruit, bad trees produce bad fruit. And you could just read it and kind of go on. Yes, we understand that.
I just want us to think a little bit more deeply today as we look at the scripture passage. 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 or grapes picked from a bramble bush.
It’s pretty clear here what Jesus is telling us. There are good trees and there are bad trees, and there are two types of fruit. There is good fruit and there is bad fruit. And what he’s saying is, you may not be able to identify a tree by its leaves, but you will be able to identify a tree by its fruit. Now, if you’re a horticulturalist or an arborvitist.
Is that the right term? Arborist, you can probably look at trees and say, yep, you want to eat the fruit off of that tree, but you don’t want to eat the fruit off of that one. When we go to visit our daughter overseas, they have orange trees. And all along the roads they have all these beautiful orange trees. You know, they’re like Christmas trees with the oranges on them.
But if you stop to eat them, they are absolutely awful because they’re sour oranges. And they planted the sour oranges all on the streets to look beautiful. They don’t want people eating them. Does that make sense? But if I look at one tree and I look at the other, I wouldn’t be able to tell you this is a good orange or this is a sour orange just by looking at the leaves.
But if you eat the fruit from both of them, you know that there’s a distinction difference. You also can’t make a bad tree produce good fruit. And the example here is that you have a bramble bush or a thorn bush. It doesn’t matter how much manure or fertilizer or water that you give, that it’s not going to produce anything good to eat. Doesn’t matter if you sing to it or you talk to it, whatever you like to do to your plants.
You can’t make a bad plant produce produce good fruit. But you also can’t make a good tree produce bad fruit because it’s not in the nature there. But Jesus isn’t just talking so much about trees here. He’s trying to make a point about people. A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart.
And an evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart. His heart. So just like trees, when we look at people, we don’t know if they are good people or they are bad people. Because they all might dress the same way, they might look the same, they might be the same height. And Jesus is saying, just like trees.
You can’t tell what a person is truly like just by looking at their external appearances. You don’t know if they are good or bad. You can only discern people just like fruit trees by the fruit that they produce in their life. And the key to this has to deal with whether a person’s heart is good or a person’s heart is bad. Again, Jesus says a good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart.
It’s not based on how they look on the outside. And in the same way an evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart. What makes the difference in people whether they are good or bad is whether they have a good heart or whether they have an evil heart. Does a person have a good heart or do they have an evil heart? Where does this all go back to?
Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden, because we have this metaphor here of two trees, a good tree and a bad tree. And of course, when the Jews heard this, their thoughts going to go back to the Garden of Eden where we had the tree of Life and we had the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A good tree and a bad tree. So I want us to remind us of some things here. And the first thing is that God made everything good over and over in the passage each day when he created things and God saw that it was good.
And when he had created Adam and Eve and his creation was complete, it says God saw all that he had made, and it wasn’t just good, but now that it was all together, it was very good. And it was very good indeed. What I’m trying to point out to you here is that Adam and Eve were created good. And they were created good because God is a good God. The fact that everything that he made was good shows that that is his character and that his nature.
He did not create anything that was evil. He didn’t create anything that was dangerous. He didn’t create Adam and Eve to be evil. He made them good as everything else is. And that’s a very important thing to go back to Genesis 1, because people are continually asking the question, if God is so good, then why is there so much evil in the world?
And the answer to that is, God didn’t make an evil world. We can’t blame him for how things are because he made everything perfect and good. It was Adam and Eve’s choice that brought evil into the world. It wasn’t because of God. That brings us to the next point.
God created a good world, but God gave freedom to choose to Adam and Eve. He told them in verse 16, you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die. He gave them this command. He didn’t say, well, it’s up to you to decide. You know, it may be good, it may be bad.
He was very direct. If you do this, it’s going to be harmful to you. But God gave them freedom to choose to obey him or the freedom to choose to disobey them. Disobey him. He didn’t want them to eat from the tree.
That wasn’t why he put it there in the garden. He didn’t tempt them to eat from the tree, and he certainly didn’t force them to eat from the tree. Adam and Eve had a choice, to follow the Lord or not to follow him. And as we know what the text goes on, in chapter three, verse six through seven, they made the choice to disobey God. She being Eve, took some of its fruit and ate it.
And she also gave some to her husband, who was right there with her, and he ate it. And when that happened, the eyes of both of them were opened. And. And immediately we see in the good world where everything was great and wonderful, all of a sudden they felt shame. They began to blame one another.
There was hostility between them. Death entered the world. There was conflict in their marriage. There was fear of seeing God when he came to walk with them that day. And God promised them that there would be toil and pain.
Adam and Eve had the choice. And when they made the choice, Adam and Eve gave up good for evil. Now they didn’t change. Externally, they didn’t look different. What changed in them was that their hearts became evil.
Imagine growing up in a world where you never saw or experienced murder or cruelty or hatred or hunger or pain or conflict or death. We would love that for our kids, wouldn’t we? To live in a world like that, where you don’t even have a sense of what fear is or you don’t experience any pain. That’s the world that Adam and Eve were in. And when they made the choice, immediately their whole world changed.
It’d be like going to a wedding. Everything’s perfect. You’re enjoying the music, and the bride is walking down, and you see the groom, and he’s smiling, he’s crying because he’s so excited about his beautiful bride. And then all of a sudden, a bomb drops on you, and you’re in the middle of a war zone. It was that drastic of a change that Adam and Eve experienced because of their choice.
Or it’d be like going to a preschool graduation and all the kids are dressed up at the front and all of a sudden they’re in the middle of a war zone. We don’t understand that here. But that’s what’s going on in other parts of the world and continually. But I’m just trying to help you understand the drastic change because of the choice that Adam and Eve made to disobey God. This was the experience that Adam and Eve had.
All of a sudden, they had thoughts of taking control in their marriage. Who’s in charge here? They began arguing. They were finding fault all of a sudden in one another. And they were embarrassed and fearful, ashamed.
All of a sudden, all these negative emotions just poured out on them that they had never experienced before. And it was all because they disobeyed God. Not because he forced them to, not because he wanted them to, not because he created evil. But they came upon bad hearts because of their own choices. When we go back to the text now, he says that an evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart.
For his mouth speaks from the overflow of his heart. Adam and Eve, who had been created good by their own choice, became evil. They were no longer good trees, they were bad trees. They looked the same on the outside. That didn’t change.
But what did change is that there was a change in their hearts. And forever from that point on, every human that is born has an evil heart in them. There is no one good. Scripture tells us, for all have sinned. So when Jesus is talking about good trees and bad trees, good people and bad people, he’s not talking about someone that just looks like they’re acting good.
He’s saying they either have a good heart or they have a bad heart. How might God have responded to them? He could have destroyed Adam and Eve. He could have struck them dead immediately and buried them there in the garden. And he could have destroyed the world and started all over again with creatures that would hopefully obey him the next time.
But God did not destroy them because God his goodness had an intense love for them and everyone that would be born afterward. So what did God do? God provided what they needed. Genesis 3:21. The Lord God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.
And there’s spiritual application here. This is an object lesson that shows what they needed. God was demonstrating to them that the penalty of their sinful choice was that there would have to be a sacrifice where blood would be slain and there needed to be a covering to put over them. God provided what they needed. He provided a sacrifice and he provided clothing.
Now, before this, there was no death. They had not been killing any animals up to this point. So all of a sudden, this was a new thing to them. But God, instead of slaying them for their sins, was showing there’s a possibility of a sacrifice for you. Hebrews 9:22 tells us that a blood sacrifice became necessary because of their sin.
According to the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Adam and Eve needed forgiveness from God, but it wasn’t as easy as just saying, God, I’m sorry about this. Forgive me. There was death, there was shedding the blood because of the decision that they had made.
And that covering that God gave them was just temporary. From that day forward, animals would have to die in order for Adam and Eve to continue to cover themselves. There are four things I want you to think about here. The covering required death and the shedding of blood. The covering was also just a temporary one.
And the covering didn’t change their hearts. It only did something externally for them to make them look different. And lastly, again, the covering did not change their heart. And that condition that Adam and Eve had in their heart was passed on to their children. We see it that Cain, out of jealousy, killed his brother Abel and the world and its people.
As we read in Genesis and just the first few chapters became more and more and more wicked until it got to the point that only Noah and his family were righteous and God did a reset with the world. God wasn’t finished with people, though. He continued to have those that followed him that preached the truth. Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Israel, and finally Moses came along and gave us the law that they could follow. But Scripture tells us that even the law was not sufficient to change what needed to be changed.
And let’s see if you’re tracking with me what needed to be changed in Them, their heart, all this external stuff is just a picture of what really needs to happen. God works through people and eventually gives the law. But this does not change the root problem of people. Their hearts are not changed. Let’s go over to Romans 8, verses 2 through 3.
And we see in the New Testament that the law was not sufficient. For the law could not. What the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh. God, did he condemn sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering. You get that?
The law couldn’t do what needed to be done because people had weak flesh. That means the people themselves were incapable of changing their own hearts. But praise the Lord, there are two words there. When the people couldn’t do it, what does it say? God did and how did he do it?
He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering. Jesus came to be a man so that he could be sacrificed, just like God had sacrificed the animal for Adam and Eve. God works through people. He eventually gives the law. But the law does not change the root problem of people following the law.
Being a good person on the outside does not change you. He had to do something more. He had to do something better. He had to do something permanent to change their hearts. He needed a sufficient sacrifice that was once and for all.
And the way he did that was he sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ. This need for a change of heart, a change of heart is needed is throughout Scripture, that we read it in Psalms. If you’re with me, turn to Psalm 51. Let’s read verses 1 through 10. Psalmist understands that changing himself on the outside is not enough.
He’s saying, I need to be changed on the inside. And he said, I can’t do it, God. I need you to do that for me. Be gracious to me, God, according to your faithful love, according to your abundant compassion. Blot out my rebellion.
He’s calling to God because he knows that God is faithful, that he is loving. He is abundantly compassionate. Verse 2. He says, completely wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin. He’s saying, I can’t do.
I need you to do it for me. Indeed, I was guilty when I was born. I was sinful when my mother conceived me. This is the heart condition that Adam and Eve passed on to everyone after them. But he says, surely God, you desire integrity, not just on the outside, but in the inner self, in my heart.
And you Teach me wisdom, not just in my head, but deep within. Purify me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Turn your face away from my sins and blot out all my guilt. You notice, this is all about what he wants God to do for him.
God, create a clean heart for me and renew a steadfast spirit within me. The psalmist understood, and he longed for this cleansing and changing of his heart that he knew only God could provide. We don’t only find this teaching in the Psalms and in Genesis, we find it in the Prophets. Let’s go to Ezekiel, chapter 36, verses 24 through 7. God speaks to the prophet Ezekiel, and he says, I will also sprinkle clean water on you and you will be clean.
I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances. The psalmist said, God, I need you to do this for me.
And here God is saying, I am going to do this for you. There’s nothing required of the people that God is speaking to, except that he wants to do this for them. Not just to exchange them on the outside, but to give them a new heart and to give them a new spirit. We see it in Psalms, we see it in the prophets. Let’s go to Jesus Words himself.
And here he’s talking to the scribes and the Pharisees. These were the people that everybody thought were wonderful. These are the people that were following the law that was incapable of saving them. But to everybody looking at them, they looked wonderful. Jesus says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self indulgence. Blind Pharisees. First clean the inside of the cup so that the outside of it may also become clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity.
And in the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. He’s talking about cups here. How many of you have your favorite coffee cup? I’ve got a couple in my office. I mean, they just feel right.
Or when we go on trips, Mary will pick up a cup and she says, oh, this. This just feels good in my hand. And it says, best Nana ever. I have to buy it for her. It’s just the perfect cup.
Our last trip once said Nana and one said Papa. Matching set. We were really blessed to get those. I drink coffee every morning in my office. I put creamer in it.
I’m supposed to rinse it out every day at the end of the day. But sometimes I don’t. And maybe on Thursday I’m not going to be here Friday, and I’m not going to be here Saturday, and I’m not going to be here Sunday. And maybe something comes up on Monday, you know, somebody, there’s a death or something’s happening. I don’t make it until Tuesday.
And I come in and if I pour coffee into that cup and I start to drink it, you know what’s in it. There’s black and white mold floating on top of it. The Pharisees were like that. They were cleaning the outside of their cup. But what was inside of them was gross and it was evil and it was poisonous to them.
Jesus was saying, it’s not about changing on the outside, it’s about changing on the inside. And to think about it was the scribes and the Pharisees and everybody that looked at them, they said, oh, but they’re perfect. They’re religious. But nobody was concerned about their hearts. They were only wanting to conform themselves on the outside to the law.
They looked good, but the truth was that there was no good fruit in their lives. We go back to Luke 6 in our text.
We find a change of heart is needed. 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. And figs aren’t gathered from thorn bushes or grapes picked from a bramble bush.
A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. And an evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart. If we have a desire to be a good tree, if we have a desire to be a good person, it doesn’t happen because we modify our behavior or what we do. It happens only if there is a change of our nature and a change of our heart. Because we’ve seen that the way we are all born is evil.
We are all bad trees. We cannot change our nature. You can’t make an apple tree into a orange tree. You can’t Make a thorn bush into a pear tree. Something more drastic has to happen.
There has to be what scripture tells, a reborn experience. There has to be a rebirth as a new kind of tree, a different kind of tree. And when that happens, God gives us a new heart. We go to John chapter 3, where Jesus talks about being born again. He’s talking to Nicodemus here, a religious person.
He says, truly, I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
And Nicodemus immediately asks, how can anyone be born when he is old? He’s thinking that Jesus is saying, this is something that physically and literally has to happen. And he’s saying, I’m big, my mom’s dead. How can I go back into her womb? Even if she was here, this make sense to him.
How can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born? But Jesus wasn’t talking about a physical change. He was talking about a heart change. Truly, I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, but whatever is born of the spirit is spirit.
There had to be a birth in Nicodemus of his spirit coming to life. A change of heart is needed.
Nicodemus must have been thinking, well, then, if I’m not going back into my mother’s womb, then what is going to make this change? And Jesus was telling him that belief in Jesus changes hearts. It’s not an external change, but it’s belief in Jesus that changes hearts. And Jesus relates this story about the Israelites in the Old Testament, where we know over and over they kept sinning and rebelling against the Lord. And one time the Lord was so fed up with them that he sent snakes in amidst them.
And whenever a snake bit someone, that person died. But even though that there was punishment for their sin, God still still provided a way that they didn’t have to die. And the way he did that, he told Moses to take a brass serpent and put it up on a pole. And if anybody will just look at that, then they won’t die. Sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn’t it?
It would be like us. Imagine if we put a brass serpent out here on a pole in our front yard and we told the world, if you come and look at it, you’re going to be healed of cancer. How many people would show up? It didn’t make any sense. But because God told them to do, didn’t matter whether it made sense or not.
When God says something, we just need to believe it and obey. And that’s what the Israelites that obeyed God and looked at the serpent, they were healed. And Jesus uses that picture now to say what I’m about to tell you isn’t going to make any sense, but because it’s from God, if you believe, this is what will make the change in your heart. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of man, Jesus is talking about himself must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him, they look at him and they understand that salvation comes that way. Everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
For God loved the world this way. He gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. It’s not changing your exterior, it’s not trying to live a good life that changes your heart. It’s belief in Jesus Christ that makes that change.
John 3, verse 1. There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. We have this man. He is not just a religious man. He is one of the religious leaders.
And he wasn’t a liberal religious leader. He was a conservative religious leader. That’s what it means, that he was a Pharisee. He believed in the word of God. He wanted to follow the word of God.
He was doing his best to follow the word of God, and everybody looking at him on the outside saw that. But he wasn’t only a Pharisee and a good man, but he was part of the Sanhedrin. He was in the top 70 men in all of Israel that was a ruler of the Jews. This is how religious he was in following the law. And not only was he a person who lived externally according to the law, not only was he a distinguished religious leader, but it tells us that he was interested in Jesus.
This man came to him being Jesus and night, and said, rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform these signs you do, unless God were with him. A religious man, a distinguished religious leader. He was a seeker of Jesus Christ and he even acknowledged who Jesus was. But yet all of this was not enough to change his heart.
Good lives, good reputations, and sincere interest in Jesus, all of these things are not enough. Nicodemus is the person that reads his Bible continually and he’s trying to live his life according to the Bible. And he comes to church and he’s interested in Jesus and he sings the songs. And on the outside, he or she looks wonderful to us. But that’s not enough unless that person looks to Jesus Christ and places their faith in Him.
Everyone that comes to the Father needs to be born again and go beyond good lives, good reputations, and sincere interest. So as we come to a closing today, we need to all examine ourselves. Are we able to say, yes, I have been born again. It’s not about an external change in my life, but God has changed my heart. And the reason I live the way I live is not to look good on the outside.
I live according to God’s word because my heart is different and my heart desires that. Have you been born again? Has there been a heart change in you? Are you a new creature? Are you a good tree?
Because God has completely changed you. And lastly, are you producing good fruit in your life? That’s evidence that you are a believer? Because my concern every time I preach is that somebody here, they understand a little and they’re interested, but they’ve never actually looked to Christ and accepted the fact that he is the only one that can bring salvation to you by accepting what he did for you on the cross, by being buried and having been raised from the dead, and also declaring that now he’s the Lord of your life and he’s in control to others. May we pray?
Heavenly Father, we do ask that the examination of our heart would be accompanied by your spirit, that you would show us if we truly need a change in our heart. That has not happened because we’ve been trying to do everything in our own strength. Instead of depending upon you for the salvation and the forgiveness and the clothing of righteousness that we need that only comes from you. Guide our hearts, Father, to seek truth and to make decisions that are necessary to follow Jesus. In his name we pray.
Amen.
Amen. John, chapter 15.