Series: Generosity 12 Text: Matt. 7: 15-20 Valley Community Baptist Church Nov. 3-4, 2012 Avon, CT Pastor Jay Abramson Which Tree Are You Growing? When he was 17, he discovered the writings of Karl Marx and he believed he had found the answer to all his questions. He knew now why his father was perpetually out of work. He knew now why his family was so impoverished, why the dockworkers lived in degraded conditions and why injustice thrived in society. But when this young law student contacted other followers of Marx both Socialists and Communists he was deeply disappointed. No one really seemed interested in improving society. The Socialists only wanted political power and the Communists put their party line agenda above the teachings of Marx. Then, as World War II was ending, he saw Communists involved in the Resistance against the Nazis in his country, kill other Resistance group members simply because they were not Communists. That s what turned Jacques Ellul away from liberal politics to investigate the claims of Jesus Christ. Until his death in 1994, Ellul claimed to be a follower of Jesus Christ. While I don t agree with (or even understand) all of his theological positions, I find his views on money refreshing, challenging and worth repeating. For example, when Jesus says in Matt. 6:24 that, You cannot serve both God and Money, Ellul takes him literally. He believes that Jesus is telling us that money is a rival to Jesus. In his book, Money and Power, Ellul says that we claim that we use money, but in reality money uses us and makes us servants by bringing us under its law and subordinating us to its aims i Have you felt the tyranny of this false god, money? Every need or want in our lives seems to be tied to money these days our food, our shelter, our clothing, our transportation. When it came to needs and wants, many of our ancestors used to grow it, build it, sew it or breed it. They were self-sufficient. To my great grandparents, a stock market crash had little to no meaning. They still had their cows for milk, chickens for eggs and fields for grain and vegetables. Today, our kids can t go play soccer for free in the backyard, they ve got to be on a travel team and travel teams need uniforms and uniforms cost money. How do banks make money? They take my money and lend it to someone else. But they now want to charge me a fee if I want to take back my own money from an ATM??!! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:24) Professor Ellul shows us the way to freedom from the tyranny of money. He tells us how we can break the power that money has over us. It is a necessary act, he says, of blasphemy against this false god. He writes There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. This act is giving. ii 1
In our Scripture today, Jesus is speaking of how to tell the difference between the givers and the takers. Before we see that, we need to examine the context of these words. In doing so we ll see that I. The Sermon on the Mount Isn t What You Think It Is. At the beginning of Matthew 5 it says of Jesus: (Matt. 5:1, 2) Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them At the beginning of chapter 8 of Matthew, it says of Jesus: When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. (Matt. 8:1) Between Matthew 5 and Matthew 8 is this seminal sermon that Jesus preached called, The Sermon on the Mount. Some have studied this sermon and said, This is the New Law! The Old Testament had one law and now Jesus comes and gives us the NEW LAW! This is the Law of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ!! Most liberal theologians believe this. Have you ever heard of Liberation Theology? Liberation Theologians believe that the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus New Law replacing Moses Old Law and if we will just obey it, the Kingdom of Jesus will be established on earth! Friends, that s not true. They ve greatly misunderstood this sermon. First of all, Jesus Himself said he was NOT coming to replace the Law of Moses. Jesus said: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. (Matt. 5:17, 18) But in this sermon, Jesus goes from one commandment of the Law of Moses to another and says, You have heard that it was said. (and He quotes one of the old commandments.) And then He says, But I tell you (and He gives what sounds like a new commandment.) But, in every case, it s not an EASIER requirement but a much more severe requirement. For example, Jesus said: You have heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matt. 5:27, 28) Or, Jesus teaches: Do not judge, or you too will be judged. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (Matt. 7:1, 3) Liberal theologians interpret this by saying, Okay, Jesus is teaching that adultery isn t the problem but lack of true love. So, laws concerning adultery should be abolished! And Jesus is saying that judging people for doing wrong is itself wrong. So, laws regarding criminals should be changed so that punishment is determined by the criminal s intentions, not his actions. Is that what Jesus is teaching? Hardly. In fact, He s saying almost the opposite. Jesus isn t making the sentence for sin lighter, He s making it more severe. He isn t saying, Adultery doesn t matter anymore because it s only an issue of the flesh. He s saying, Not ONLY will you go to hell for adultery, but you ll go to hell for thinking about 2
adultery. He isn t saying, Judging is no longer necessary. He saying, Not ONLY is judging appropriate for the wrongdoer, judging is also appropriate for the judge as well! Jesus isn t abolishing the Law of Moses, He s raising it to the nth degree! He sums it up for us in Matt. 5:48, a verse that you seldom hear the Liberation Theologians quote: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. So, do you see why the Pharisees, the teachers of the law, hated Jesus? Here you are, focusing all your energy as a Pharisee on getting people to follow every minute detail of the Law of Moses, when along comes Jesus who tells your students that obeying the law is only half of it. Your motives or WHY you obey is the other half. If you were a Pharisee or even just a devout follower of the Law, what would be your logical response? Wouldn t you say, Are you kidding me? Not only do I have to obey all this stuff, but I have to like it as well? Not only can I not murder that guy who is making my life miserable, but I can t even hate him? Not only do I have to live with this miserable, lazy bum of a husband, but I can t fantasize about what my life would be like with someone else? How am I supposed to make it through the day? Obeying the Law outwardly was hard enough! Now you re telling me I have to obey on the inside as well? That s not possible! When Jesus finished this sermon, notice what the people said. They didn t say, Hooray! We re free from the Law! Thank you, Jesus! You ve made our lives so much easier! No, no, they didn t say that. It says the crowds were: amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, not as their teachers (Scribes, lawyers) of the law. (Matt. 7:28b, 29) Jesus wasn t minimizing the law, reducing it to its lowest common denominator. He was magnifying the law, showing the fuller intentions. When Jesus said He came to fulfill the law, the word literally means, to bring to completion. Jesus was EXPANDING the consequences of disobeying the law until everyone was amazed at how huge their obligation was to God. The Sermon on the Mount isn t a motivational talk to get you to step up your life commitment. No, Jesus preached this sermon to remove all doubt that you could ever really obey Him. The Pharisees were indignant. The people were astonished. They were horrified. What are you? And some of you are asking, What does any of this have to do with money? Which brings us back to our text for today where Jesus says II. By Their Fruit You Will Recognize Them. Actually, you see, this has everything to do with money and judging, and adultery, and murder and divorce and revenge and every other part of your life. You see, Jesus basically had only one sermon. He just kept repeating it in slightly different ways in different places. So, the Sermon on the Mount was like the sermon on the plain was like the sermon by the lake was like the sermon in the boat and so on. He kept pounding away at one single point which we find in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt. 5:48) He kept preaching this until the people cried out, Jesus! Stop! We can t do this, all right? We can t do what You re asking of us. How can we be perfect? Have you ever asked Jesus that question or like the Liberal Theologians did you just assume he was speaking figuratively? If you take Him seriously and don t 3
try to read into His teachings your own agenda, then you inevitably will say, Wow! Love my enemy? How do I do that? Turn the other cheek when someone hits me? How? Give money to needy people but don t tell anyone, not even my best friend that I ve done it? Why? Don t worry about whether I ll have enough to eat or enough clothes to keep me warm? Don t worry? This is impossible? Jesus, how can You possibly, literally mean this? Have you ever had that reaction to Jesus teaching? If you have, then you are reacting EXACTLY the way Jesus wants you to react. Jesus wants you to feel the enormous tension between what the Father in Heaven demands and the impossibility of us on earth doing it. He wants us to feel the disgust of knowing what is right and yet being unable to accomplish it. He wants us to feel that until, with the apostle Paul, we cry out: What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:24) Until we ve come to that place, we may be irredeemable because we believe we can obey God without His help! Jesus didn t preach the Sermon on the Mount like a politician promising a New, brighter, better world if you ll just line up with me! No, no the purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to force us to see one thing: I cannot live up to His standard! In John 14, Jesus is speaking again about obeying Him. And then He tells us the only way it can be done. He says: If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. (John 14:15-17) We can live the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount only with Jesus Spirit in us. That s what Jesus meant when He said in John 15:5: apart from me you can do nothing. The Scripture passage we read today comes at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Before He ends, He describes the difference between those who THINK they are obeying Him and those who are REALLY obeying Him. He says: Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. (Matt. 7:15-20) Twice in one paragraph Jesus says that by the fruit of a person s life you ll know what kind of person he is. It must be important for Him to say it twice. What causes a tree to have good fruit or bad fruit? Most arborists will tell you it s the root system and what those roots are feeding on. Jesus says there are only two kinds of people-trees; those that produce bad fruit and those that produce good fruit. Chuck Bentley, the president of Crown Financial Ministries, calls these the Me Tree and the He Tree. iii Each has a unique root system and it is that root system that determines what type of fruit that person s life will produce. Above ground, before 4
there is any fruit, fruit trees look pretty much the same to me, especially in winter. But below ground, long before spring, the kind of fruit that will be produced is already determined. The same is true with people. Little babies look innocent and are a bundle of incredible potential. But the kind of a person they become will depend on their feeder system, what they will CHOOSE to believe. The fact that we choose the feeder system is clear from Jesus Sermon on the Plain, recorded in Luke 6:45 where He says: The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. So, the Me Tree person s root system [show diagram #1] has three main feeder stems: love of money, love of self and love of pleasure. It s all about him, do you see it? It s totally Me Centered. This is natural. We re all born this way. But the He Tree person s root system is very different. It looks like this [show diagram #2]. Its three main feeder stems are: love of people, love of God and love of giving. It s totally Other Centered. Do you see that? Is that a natural way? Do children in day care naturally love one another and share their toys with everyone. No! We re not born this way! So, what kind of fruit does each tree produce? That s the bottom line, right? Look at the Me Tree.[show diagram #3] What do we see? Greed, pride, lying, envy, worry, quarreling over money, cheating - all the things that we do to protect and promote our own interests. Look at the He Tree.[show diagram #4] What do we see? Love, kindness, patience, joy, peace, generosity; all the things that we do to promote and project the Father s interests. So, which tree is most like you? [put up the He Tree diagram and the Me Tree diagram side by side] My guess is that we all want the fruit of the He Tree, we really do. But if you re honest, you might look at the fruit on the Me Tree and have to say, Most days, that s more like me. I m producing more of that the Me Tree fruit than the He Tree fruit. If that s your honest answer, don t despair. In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us what to do when we honestly see the bad fruit in our lives. He says: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matt. 7:7) Ask for what? Seek what? Ask that Jesus take away the bad fruit and seek the good fruit to be produced through the nutrition of the Holy Spirit. This is exactly what the apostle Paul experienced in his own life. Immediately after crying out, Who will rescue me from this body of death? he says: (Rom. 7:25) Thanks be to God [I m rescued] through Jesus Christ our Lord! For everyone who asks receives (Matt. 7:8) Have you asked? Let s pray i Jacques Ellul, Money and Power (Naperville: InterVarsity Press, 1984), p. 76 ii Ibid., p. 110 iii Charles H. Bentley II, The Root of Riches (FORIAM Publishing, 2011) p. 53, 96 5