Proclamation:
"No good tree bears bad fruit, nor
does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is
recognized by its own fruit. People
do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers." Luke
6:43-44 (NIV)
Explanation:
Luke, the physician traveling companion
of the Apostle Paul, recorded these words which Jesus spoke in His Sermon on
the Mount to His disciples, and to the large crowd which had gathered around
them, good trees do not bear bad fruit, and bad trees do not bear good fruit.
The fruit which is produced is determined by the tree type.
Application:
In this case
humans are like trees, you can determine the type of person that they are by
the type of fruit which they produce. (Jeremiah 17:10 and Matthew 7:17-19)
Good people do good things and produce good fruit. Evil people will
not do good and the fruit which they produce will not be good. We will
get a much better picture of a person by examining the fruit which they
produce. It will be more accurate to
determine if a person is good by looking at the fruit which they produce rather
than by listening to the words that they speak. What we do is more
representative of who we really are than what we say. Our actions, and our fruit, speak louder for
us than our words.
