Luke 6:43–49
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 27th June 2021
We are at the end of our exploration of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I don’t know anyone who is comfortable when they finish reading the Sermon on the Mount. Some people think Jesus is asking too much, some believe the Sermon is not intended for us in this age, but is meant for some future golden age. Most are just uncomfortable: we see the sense of it, and would like to live up to it, but know that we don’t. I knew one chap who was determined he would live it out, no matter what. He seemed to be going well, until a new woman came into his life, and he ditched his wife, and eventually ditched Christianity altogether. The bottom line is that no one finds the Sermon on the Mount corresponds to the way they live.
The parable of the good tree which bears good fruit is confronting, because it suggests the problem may be that we are the wrong kind of tree:
For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.
Am I a good tree or a bad tree? Jesus seems to be saying that what I do and what I say flows naturally from what I am. Good fruit comes from a good tree. A bad tree produces bad fruit. The word his uses means “rotten”; a good tree won’t produce rotten fruit. My problem is that what flows naturally from me is often rotten. What does that say about me?
The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
We like to think we are good people, but is what comes out of us good? Does your heart contain a treasury of good things and good thoughts that naturally overflows into good words and good works? I cannot say that is me. If I am to do good I often have to force it. It doesn’t come naturally. Jesus went on to ask:
Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
That is me! Why do I so often fail to do what the one I call Lord says? It doesn’t seem to be in me to be naturally good. Can it be, then, that Jesus is just out of touch with our reality?
But remember his words to the rich ruler who addressed him as “Good teacher!” Jesus retorted, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Another time he said, “If you know how to give good gifts to your children, though you are evil, how much more will your Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” It appears Jesus doesn’t think anyone is good. But if none of us is good, and we are only able to produce according to our nature, how can he expect good from us? This is a huge question; it leads to another: Can a bad tree become a good tree? If we go by today’s identity politics the answer must be no; I am what I am. My nature has to be accepted, affirmed and celebrated. But what if I don’t like what comes out of me. Can I not seek an inward change? The Sermon on the Mount begs these questions, but only half answers them.
The other half of the answer—and it comes straight from Jesus—is that I need to be born again. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.
I was on a mission in the Bruce Rock area. In one of the nearby villages the shopkeeper and his wife invited their neighbours to a dialogue meeting. I was given five minutes to sum up what Christianity was about, and then answer questions and objections. At other meetings like this people questioned the existence of God, or why God allows suffering, or what happens to people who haven’t heard the gospel. The idea was to clarify the gospel in the discussion that followed. The first question threw me. “What’s ‘born again’?” asked the shopkeeper’s wife. It wasn’t a question I’d ever encountered, and I was struggling to find the right angle. She continued, and explained how they were a small community and all knew each other’s kids. A young man from one family had gone on a world trip and his family passed the postcards around the community. “Dear Mum and Dad, here I am with my friends in Bangkok,” written on the back of a photo of a smoke-filled room with a table covered with beer bottles. Then another similar card from Delhi, and another: “Here I am with friends in Kabul.” More bottles! Finally, a card arrived from Jerusalem: “Dear Mum and Dad, I’ve been born again.” “He’s coming home soon,” she said. “And the whole community is frightened.”
I was glad to be able to tell her that “born again” wasn’t some cult, but something Jesus spoke of. Nicodemus was a spiritual leader in Israel. He was impressed by Jesus. Jesus had to tell him he would never see the kingdom of God unless first he was born again. Nicodemus asked how that was possible. Jesus said that it came from the Holy Spirit. (John 3) A natural-born person would remain in the realm of nature. Only through the Spirit of God could one have a spiritual birth, that would move them into the realm of God and enable them to understand and enter the kingdom of God. What kind of tree am I, that bears rotten fruit? The answer is that I am a flesh-tree. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” Jesus said. “You must be born again.” I need to come alive to God, and that is only possible if the Spirit of God makes me alive. Then and only then will I begin to bear good fruit.
What I am saying here is not the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, but seems to me to be demanded by it. Jesus mission was to release the Spirit into people’s lives (Luke 3). Scripture is plain: we are dead in our trespasses and sins until Christ makes us alive and plants his Spirit in us (Ephesians 2). The effect of Jesus’ Sermon is to raise our awareness that we have a great problem: we are not good as God wishes us to be, and indeed cannot be, not until we are born again of his Spirit.
But this is the half of the answer which the Sermon doesn’t say; what does it say? Jesus continues:
Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.
I want you to think carefully about this, because Jesus is telling us here what will make the difference between life and death. He is saying that what we do with him will make the difference between who lives and who dies. He invites us to think of ourselves as a house, and to ask about our foundations.
The year I came to Perth I was obliged to attend a “Group Life Laboratory”. They don’t run them anymore. Too many people couldn’t handle what they discovered about themselves, and ended in psychiatric care. For a week we sat in a group of twenty men and women for six hours each day. There was no leader, no agenda, just an observer who occasionally commented on what had taken place. The idea was to discover what would emerge in the way of group processes. Towards the end of the week we played a game. Someone would ask the group to build their house. Piece by piece we would put together a house that was an image of how we experienced that person. I was a trainee minister; there were also a couple of older, experienced ministers in the group. One was an explosive sort of character; he asked the group to build his house. Someone gave him a tall dark house, another set it back from the road, only approachable by a long, curved driveway. When you opened the front door you entered a waiting room. It took quite a time; people kept adding details of this room or that. When you got to his study, someone suggested there was a big fireplace. To light it he threw kerosene on the wood; there was a whoosh, and black smoke would come from the chimney. Someone else described his desk and put a prayer book and a Bible on it. I was saying nothing. Over the week I had built up some negative feelings towards this man. They were under control, but I erupted at that point. “I’m sorry,” I said, I can’t see any Bible; if it’s there, it is so covered with papers and books, that I can’t see it. The group froze. The observer had noticed my silence and was delighted: at last I was being real! They asked the minister how he saw it. He said that really, I was saying something about myself. Doubtless I was, but I couldn’t let him get away with that. “I was trying to be honest about how I see you,” I said. “How do you see yourself?” His answer was revealing. “There is a Bible,” he said, “and a shelf of books behind, to tell me what it means.”
I tell this story to ask us to think about ourselves. How do you see you? And particularly, what are your foundations like? When we played that game no one thought about foundations, but Jesus identifies them as critical to what will determine whether we live or die. My father used to argue with this parable. “Sand is very good to build on,” he would say. That is true, but only true if the building has a strong concrete foundation. We make our own rock with concrete, you see, but it only works so long as water doesn’t get underneath and undermine it. I reckon what caused the collapse of that building in Miami was subsidence and cracked foundations. So, is your house built on rock or sinking sand?
Jesus came announcing the kingdom of God: God is building a house, and that house is the kingdom of the future. It has a foundation; Peter quotes from Isaiah: “See I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (1 Peter 2) Jesus quoted from Psalm 118: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” (Mark 12) Jesus was rejected by the builders of his day, but God raised him up and has made him the foundation stone of a whole new world. Everything that does not rest on that stone will be swept away in a flood of destruction. This sounds harsh, but look at it this way. This whole world is rotten. The whole of humanity is in rebellion against its Creator, and is building a house of cards, or houses of cards, which cannot stand for much longer.
You can see the parable as a warning: if you do not come to Jesus, listen to him, do what he says, you will not survive the cataclysm that lies ahead. You can also see it as a promise: “If you come to me, listen to what I am saying, and take action like I am telling you, you will survive—whatever may lie ahead.”
But how does this fit with what I said about our inability to be truly good, about being bad trees, about our need for a new birth? Is Jesus not asking us to do what is impossible for us to do? He is, but not entirely. It is true, we have no control over God’s Spirit. He will do what he will do. As Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it wills, you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from, or where it goes. So it is, with everyone born of the Spirit.” We cannot command the Spirit. Nevertheless, Jesus calls us to come to him. We can do that. “Come to me, learn from me, do as I tell you.” If you do that, the Spirit of God will be there—with you, in you, helping you. You need have no fear of that. You would never have come to Jesus, if the Spirit had not been working in you.
There are a lot of people running around out there building their houses on shonky foundations. Storms are coming which will sweep them away. There will be storms in your own lifetime which will break against you and attempt to collapse your building. You may be strong and come through. But the storm of God’s final judgement you will not survive—not unless you hasten now to come to Jesus and rebuild your life on him and his Word. This childhood song says it all:
Build on the rock—the rock that ever stands! Build on the rock, and not upon the sands. You need not fear the storm or the earthquake’s shock. You’re safe forever more, if you build on the rock.
I want to pray. I want you to pray along with me. If you haven’t already surrendered your life to Jesus, I invite you to do so today. And share with me, or another Christian what you have done.
Dear God, I don’t have a solid foundation for my life. I want to live; I don’t want to be swept away in the flood. I want eternal life. I want to get through this life in one piece, and I don’t want to fall in the judgement. I want Jesus to be my Lord. I want to learn from him, and live as he says. I cannot do this without the help of your Spirit. Receive me! Be my Saviour! Be my Lord! Show me the way to go! Amen.