Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

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I read an illustration about an Englishman with a Rolls-Royce. Now, in case you don’t know, Rolls-Royce makes some of the most expensive cars sold, and they’ve been doing that for about 100 years, and it’s mostly due to its reputation of being a luxury car. So anyway, the Englishman put his Rolls-Royce on a boat and went across to the English channel to go on a vacation. But while he was driving it around Europe, something happened to the motor of his car, and his car broke down. So he called the Rolls-Royce corporation back in England and asked, “I’m having trouble with my car; I can’t fix it myself, what do you suggest I do?” They replied, “We’ll take care of it.” And before he knew it, the Rolls-Royce corporation flew one of their mechanics over! The mechanic repaired the car and flew back to England and left the man to continue his vacation.

As you can imagine, the man was wondering, “How much is this going to cost me?” So when he got back to England, he wrote the Rolls-Royce corporation a letter and asked how much he owed them. He received a letter from the office that read: “Dear Sir: There is no record anywhere in our files that anything ever went wrong with a Rolls-Royce.”

This is an awesome illustration of how Jesus justifies us. In the beginning, God created us in His image. Perfect. Like a luxury car. But we sinned, we broke down. And we couldn’t fix ourselves. So we’re guilty before God. But Jesus justified us, repairs us, based on His work for us on the cross.

When we place our faith in Jesus, He washes away our sin, so that it’s just as if we’d never sinned. So when God looks at our case, He says, “There is no record anywhere in our files that anything ever went wrong with Chris Huff.” I’m saved, justified, made good, made right with God, because Jesus came into my life. And none of it is based on my goodness, but on Jesus.

Read Luke 6:43-45

When Abby and I were in college, before we had gotten married, she drew a picture of what she wanted our relationship to look like when we were married. She drew herself as a colorful sunflower: smiling, and beautiful, and swaying in the wind! Even as a flower, she was knock-out gorgeous! And she drew me as a tree: tall, and strong, and bearing fruit.

And if you asked her now, she’d tell you that I became that man. But I can’t help but analyze my life to see if I measure up. I’m definitely not tall. But am I strong? Or at least strong enough? I don’t usually feel very strong. And do I bear enough fruit? Or is my fruit rotten?

Well, when we read a text such as our passage this morning, we immediately start to analyze our lives in order to justify ourselves. “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.” And so we start to rationalize our fruit so that we can label ourselves as good trees. “Well, I go to church! I tithe! I even sing once in awhile during the worship time! I’d say I’m doing pretty good!” But is that really the kind of fruit that displays that we’re Christians? Is that all that God requires of us?

No! So maybe it’s talking more the stuff that only the super spiritual Christians do. Stuff like reading your Bible outside of church, and visiting the sick. Man, if that’s all it takes, I’d say I’m good. In fact, I’ve got it made, because not only do I read Scripture every day, but I visit the sick, and as your pastor, I get paid to do these things! I get paid to be good! And our deacons, too, they must be good trees, even more than me, because they do these things, too! They visit the sick in the hospital, and our members in nursing homes, so while I get paid to be good, they’re good for nothing! That came out wrong. They’re good without even being paid. But is that really all God requires of us?

Or is there another kind of fruit? In Philippians 1:22, Paul wrote that living in the flesh meant fruitful labor for him. He wasn’t just talking about going to church and singing some songs. He was talking about sharing his faith. He was talking about seeing people come to Christ because of his ministry. So maybe Jesus was talking about seeing souls saved.

Or maybe Jesus was talking about the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Maybe, in order to prove that we’re Christians, we need to be loving. To be joyful. To be full of peace, and so on. But these are things that are harder to measure, aren’t they? I mean, how much love do we need to have? How much joy do we need to have? And what about unbelievers who seem to have more love and joy than me?

So you see, the comparison game, and the rationalizing game, can be very dangerous, because we’re trying to justify ourselves, and if you’re honest, you just will never measure up.

But the point of this passage is not for you to try to do a bunch of good deeds to prove that you’re a Christian. The point is that God knows who is His. And God transforms His children to do good.

It’s not that we’re good in ourselves because of our works, it’s that God makes us good by the blood of Jesus. And then, God produces good fruit in us and through us.

A couple months back, a university student named Christian LeBlanc was feeding elephants in Thailand and taking pictures and video of the elephants. When Christian didn’t have any more food to give the elephants, one of the elephants grabbed Christian’s GoPro camera instead and took an elephant selfie, or an elphie, if you will.

What an incredible image! But the resulting controversy was over who owned this image. Did the university student own it, because it was his camera, or did the elephant own it, because the elephant took the picture? Or did nobody own the picture, because elephants can’t own pictures?

The same thing happened with a monkey in 2014. The monkey was actually holding this camera, pointing it at himself, and yet the photographer who gave the monkey the camera was the one who had the idea of the photoshoot, set the camera up, and placed the camera near the monkey so that it would pick it up and fiddle with it, and the photographer really did most of the work to get the photo. So the question is, who owns the photo?

Well, the courts ruled that nobody owned it, and that it could be displayed publicly by anyone because it was in the public domain. I’m not sure that was the right decision, but it does raise an interesting question for us.

Who owns your works? When you do anything, can you take credit for it? When we do anything worthy of praise, maybe we should have the attitude of Paul, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” And “It is God who works in you to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

Maybe we’re far too quick to take credit for our works. Instead of glorying ourselves, maybe we should give all the glory to God. Maybe we should not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. Maybe we should be so consumed with love for God, because of His love for us, that we don’t care about justifying ourselves, because God has freely justified us by His grace!

And if that’s how we look ourselves, our own fruit, shouldn’t that be how we look at others? Because, ultimately, their fruit doesn’t save them either! So I don’t think we can’t fully know when others are saved or not. That’s not our place.

“Yeah, but Pastor, it says that each tree is known by its own fruit. So can’t we observe someone’s life, and tell whether or not they’re saved?”

Okay, but I’ve also heard of many pastors, who seemed to produce an abundance of good fruit, who later had affairs, and left their families, or left the faith altogether. A tree is known by its fruit, but not primarily by us. God knows who is His.

“For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.” Jesus was saying, “You can’t expect a thornbush to give you figs, and you can’t expect a bramble bush to give you grapes. And a thornbush won’t magically turn into a fig tree, and a bramble bush won’t magically turn into a grape vine. That’s impossible! That would take something like, like, a miracle!”

You can’t force good works out of yourself. All you can do is trust in Christ, and allow Him to do the impossible: to save you. To change you, from a thornbush, to a fig tree.

But how does that happen? (v. 45)

Where is your treasure? Is it in the things of this life? Is it in your family? Is it in yourself? God wants us to see that Jesus is our greatest treasure! Knowing Jesus and becoming part of His kingdom is like finding treasure in a field, and then in your joy, selling all that you have to buy that field! When you know Jesus, you have joy in Him, and you become willing to give up everything else in life because nothing else compares to Him. It’s not that we’re good in ourselves, but rather that our good treasure, Jesus, makes us good, so that we produce good.

I think that we often try to avoid sin the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons. We know that we can’t earn favor with God because we’re sinners, so Jesus died for our sin, so we receive His grace, but then we act like our relationship with God is based on our obedience, so we try really hard to obey, and feel like we’ve blown it when we mess up.

But Jesus didn’t die just so that we can work harder at obeying the law. Jesus died to set us from free the law, not so that we can work harder to try to obey it more, and feel guilty more if we break it. The goal is not merely to stop sinning, or to try to be good, but to be so in love with Jesus, that we don’t want to sin anymore, then Jesus makes us good, and we produce good fruit because we love Jesus!

So if you want to produce good fruit, stop trying so hard! Instead, find your treasure in Jesus Christ. Know Jesus, and be known by Jesus. Jesus will transform your heart, so that you produce good fruit.

Because, ultimately, who is the good tree that produces good fruit? Who is good? The Bible says, “None is righteous.” Our greatest acts of righteousness are filthy rags. We’re not good. We’re all bad trees, which produce bad fruit. We speak evil out of our evil treasure, and we produce evil.

Kids can really humble you, can’t they? I was under the impression that kids looked up to their parents and thought that they were perfect. But I’ve raised my kids to have a realistic view of their parents. I was talking with Abby one day about making mistakes and I jokingly said, “But not us, we’re perfect, right?” And about that time, our 9 year old daughter Amber walked into the room, and I asked her, “Your mom and dad do everything perfect, right?” And she said, “No! You’re sinners!” I just started laughing and said, “You’re right!” None of us are righteous, and none of us are good.

But Jesus is good.

He was the only one who truly bore good fruit, all of His life, and never once bore any bad fruit, because His heart is truly good, and His treasure is in God the Father, and God the Spirit, and out of that good treasure, He produces good. Jesus is good. And Jesus died on a tree. And it was good. It was the will of God, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

You see, He is the vine, and we are the branches. We can only be good if we abide in Christ. Even an apple tree can’t produce apples on its own. It needs the nutrients of the soil. It needs water. It needs sunlight. And if we want to produce good fruit, we need to be rooted in Christ. If I want to be the great tree that Abby drew, strong, fruit-bearing, I need to be rooted in Christ.

If we want to be loving, we need Jesus to be loving in us.

If we want to be joyful, we need Jesus to be joyful in us.

And if we want to produce the fruit of salvation, we need Jesus to save us.