It was remiss of me not to thank
you for your prayers for us as we
have been away on a time of vacation,
and I do want to do so just
now.
It was really wonderful that Mrs. Owen and
I were able to leave together this year,
and we owe this very much to your
prayers for us and for our physical well
-being.
And the Lord has been very merciful to
us.
We went to a land that was warmer
than Canada.
Let you skeptics listen.
It was very warm in England, and not
a drop of rain.
I think we did have rain one night
when we were fast asleep.
But at any rate, the Lord was kind
and merciful to us, and we're very glad
to be back again.
Though wondering whether the Lord is trying to
smother us this morning with this humidity that
we find a little bit strange after being
away from it.
However, He is good and merciful, and we
look to Him for His ability to do
His will.
Now there was a text ringing in my
heart before I went away, and it has
remained there, and it is to it that
I want to turn this morning, deviating from
our normal Lord's Day morning ministry at this
time.
And you will find really the heart of
the message in verse 33 in that great
twelfth chapter of Matthew's Gospel, from which we
earlier read.
Our Lord Jesus says, according to the New
International Version, make a tree good, and its
fruit will be good.
Or make a tree bad, and its fruit
will be bad.
For a tree is recognized by its fruit.
Now I would like to place the emphasis
upon the first words there.
Make the tree good, and its fruit will
be good.
You have noticed, I'm quite sure, in reading
the Gospels, how often our Lord laid hold
of something that was very obvious, something that
was the focus of attention at that given
moment, and employed it in order to enunciate
some spiritual principle or truth.
He saw a sword going out to sow,
and immediately He fastened upon it and made
it a means whereby He spoke of His
own work, and of the work of those
whom He sent forth to do what He
had done, namely, to disseminate the seed of
the Gospel, with a view to harvesting in
due course.
He saw a sparrow fall.
He had something spiritual to say about that.
He saw people building houses.
He used that too.
And He saw someone leaving the ninety and
nine sheep that were quite safe in the
fold, and going out into a desert place
to seek for the one lone sheep that
had gone astray, and to seek for it
until He found it.
It's a habit in our Lord's teaching ministry
to fasten upon something like that, and to
make it the basis of a dissertation about
spiritual things.
Now we have something of that order, not
exactly perhaps, but something of that order before
us this morning.
Our text is an illustration of something that
was universally recognized.
You did not need to go to school,
to go to college.
You certainly did not need to be a
graduate of the Jerusalem University or any other
in order to understand this.
It was universally understood and acknowledged.
What was it?
Well, this.
That there is an inevitable connection between the
fruit that a tree bears, and the tree
itself, the nature of the tree.
Put differently, it simply means this.
The nature of a tree determines the nature
of its fruit.
A bad tree, says Jesus, can only bring
forth bad, evil fruit.
A good tree will bring forth good fruit.
And He turns to some people around them
and He says, of course, He says, you
simply cannot bring forth good fruit because of
the kind of people you are.
And He calls them, not very gentlemanly you
may say, but I think He had good
grounds for doing so.
He calls them a breed of vipers.
You cannot bring forth anything good because your
hearts are evil, a tree and its fruit.
Now, I want to begin with this basic
principle and I want to try God helping
us.
I want us to get hold of the
fact that this is a universal phenomenon.
It is a universal principle.
It is something that was true yesterday, it'll
be true tomorrow.
It is true in the north and the
south and the east and the west, in
all times, under all circumstances, everywhere.
There is a connection that is universally binding
between a tree and the fruit it bears.
Make a tree good and its fruit will
be good.
Or make a tree bad and its fruit
will be bad.
For a tree is recognized by its fruit.
A universally binding principle.
Now, no one in his right mind would
deny this principle.
I've never met anyone who wanted to.
I certainly haven't met anyone who's been able
to do so.
Its truth is too evident to be denied.
The nature of a tree determines the nature
of the fruit on its branches.
You must cultivate good rootage if you want
good fruit.
Root and fruit are most intimately and inherently
related.
Now, the universally evident principle brought out here
by our Lord is practiced everywhere.
For example, you may think this morning of
a man or a woman, for that matter,
in any part of the globe, north or
south, east or west, black or white, rich
or poor, matters not.
These four people, these four imaginary people, want
to produce apples in their garden.
I'm assuming that they have a garden, of
course.
They want to produce apples.
What are they going to sow?
What are they going to plant in their
garden in order to produce apples?
Certainly, they won't plant gooseberry bushes there.
I don't care whether they live in the
north, the south, the east or the west,
whether they're poor or rich.
They don't need to go to school.
If they want to produce apples, they're not
going to plant gooseberry bushes, nor pear trees,
nor banana trees, or anything else.
But simply, apple trees.
It is only an apple root and an
apple tree that can produce apples.
Indeed, you can take the principle further, as
our Lord apparently does here.
If you want to produce good apples, you
must plant a good tree.
You must have a good tree that has
been cared for, looked after, and so forth,
and cultivated.
Golden, delicious apples.
That shows my favorite apple.
You have to bear your heart every now
and again.
Well, golden, delicious apples don't grow on every
apple tree.
They only grow on a golden, delicious tree
that has the right root and has been
cultivated accordingly.
This is a universally evident principle.
The Apostle Paul refers, you remember, also in
a different context altogether, but he refers also
to this same principle.
He says, whatsoever a man sows, that shall
he also reap.
It's the same principle, basically.
Now, there is a spiritually evident application to
this.
And it is to this, of course, that
we are coming.
Jesus proceeded here in the context to apply
this basic principle to the moral and spiritual
realms, when he went on to say, and
I quote, out of the overflow of the
heart, the mouth speaks.
The good man brings good things out of
the good stored up in him.
And the evil man brings evil things out
of the evil stored up in him.
Verses 34 and 35.
Now, notice that.
Jesus fastens not so much upon the evident
works and deeds our hands may perform, but
he fastens here upon what we might easily
pass by, upon the words we utter, our
speech, what we say, what we think, and
what we say.
He proceeds to say that this principle explains
men's speech.
What we say, says Jesus, is determined at
a deeper level than our mouths.
It's not simply that our lips and our
mouths happen to formulate a particular set of
words.
What you say, my friend, this is what
Jesus comes to tell us this morning, what
you say, your speech, comes from the depths.
It's the overflow of the person within.
Now, what is true of speech, of course,
is true of action generally, but Jesus fastens
on this because this has so much relevance
in this particular context.
Why do some men swear and curse and
whine and whatnot?
Well, it all comes from the depths.
Why are some men and women so gracious
in their speech, so kind, so helpful, so
generous, so wise?
Well, the answer is the same.
It comes from the depths.
It's the quality of the tree.
Let me repeat.
Our speech, our words are produced and their
quality is determined by the nature of our
own hearts.
God deems this so basic that according to
Jesus, we shall ultimately be judged by our
own words.
Now, I'm not so sure that any of
us really take this seriously, but the connection
between the words of our lips and the
quality of our soul, the condition of our
spirit is such that when the day of
judgment comes, God says, you'll be judged by
what you say because what you say is
absolutely indicative of what you are.
The quality of your soul, the condition of
your soul will have been expressed over a
lifetime of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,
70 years by your words and your utterances.
What you say and have said will stand
as a testimony against you, indicating whether the
tree of your life was good or evil.
My dear friends, I wonder where we will
stand.
I tell you, says Jesus, that men will
have to give account on the day of
judgment for every careless word they have spoken,
for by your words you will be acquitted
and by your words you will be condemned.
Our speech, our words are an infallible indication
of the quality of our inner life.
What we think in the depths of our
being, what we imagine, what we dream about,
what going on inside of us in the
very depths of our being determines what the
lips say and our attitude in saying what
we do.
Jesus has said this in many places and
in different ways.
I don't want to go after other illustrations
of it now, but let me just remind
you of this.
He said earlier on concerning false prophets that
would emerge after his day, by their fruits
you will know them.
And this is as true and as applicable
to us today in the 20th century as
to those who first heard the message in
our Lord's day and age.
There is a connection universally acknowledged between the
root and the tree, the quality of the
tree and the fruit it bears.
Now I want you to notice how this
really explains many things in this particular context.
You apply this text, you apply this principle
rather, and you will see that it explains
so many things.
Apply this for example to our Lord Jesus
himself.
In this context as you heard from the
reading, if you are not already familiar with
the passage, you will remember that among other
things the leaders of the Jews charged our
Lord Jesus that he was really able to
do so many mighty deeds such as exorcising
demons.
He was able to do these things not
because he was a good man, not because
he was the Son of God, not because
he was the Messiah, not because the Spirit
of God was upon him.
Oh no.
He was able to do these things said
these strange men and women of his day,
these perverted men and women of his day.
He was able to do these things because
he was in league with a prince of
devils or demons, Beelzebub.
Now notice they attribute every good thing that
Jesus said and every good deed that Jesus
accomplished not to God, Father or Son or
Holy Spirit or to a good man even,
Jesus of Nazareth, but they attributed the good
deed to his alleged league and association with
the very prince of hell and of darkness
according to their theology.
Now let's apply this test.
If it is true that by their fruits
you know them, if it is true that
it is only a good tree that can
bring forth good fruit.
What does that say about the Lord Jesus
himself?
Well let's examine the fruit of his life.
What kind of fruit did he bear?
What kind of things did he do?
What kind of words did he say?
What was his influence?
Now really I'm opening up a theme which
is too large and too big for one
sermon or one day.
You can follow this and you can pursue
it at your own time and I tell
you it will be a most profitable one.
What kind of things did he do?
What was the fruit that was evident in
his life?
Well just take what we have here.
The Holy Spirit of God has inspired Matthew
to bring together a number of things which
are most helpful and most suggestive.
Take the first earlier than the passage that
we had for our reading this morning.
You go back to chapter 12 and to
beginning with verse 9.
You have an incident here in the synagogue.
Going on from that place Jesus went into
their synagogue and a man with a shriveled
hand was there looking for a reason to
accuse Jesus.
They asked him before he did anything, they
asked him, is it lawful to heal on
the Sabbath day?
You see they had an inkling already in
their hearts that the Lord Jesus couldn't look
at this man with a shriveled hand without
doing something to help him.
What a marvelous testimony to the grace of
the Son of God.
Before he did anything, before he said anything,
they must have seen his eye fall upon
this dear man who was so very self
-conscious of his physical deformity and they thought
he's going to do something.
And they were getting angrier, more and more
angry all the time.
And then they posed the question, is it
easy right they said that a man should
do something of this kind on the Sabbath
day?
Jesus replied in a very simple way, but
it's a very challenging, it's deceptively challenging as
far as they were concerned.
He said, well now you good people, he
says listen, here you are on your farms.
If a sheep falls into a pit on
the Sabbath day, what do you good people
do?
Do you leave the poor sheep there or
do you do what Moses commanded you to
do?
Do you go immediately and rescue the sheep
even though it is a Sabbath day?
Of course you do.
Now says Jesus, if it is right to
rescue a sheep from a pit on a
Sabbath day, surely it is even more legitimate
to rescue a man from the very slavery
of Satan, be it Sabbath or not Sabbath.
For a man is made in the image
of God an immortal.
A man is made to live forever.
Eternity is in his soul.
He will be lost or he will be
saved.
Surely, surely he says you're inconsistent and irrational
here and unbiblical here.
The fruit Jesus bore, he proved to be
good.
Even by comparing it with something that they
themselves did, he confounded them.
He said, you people would say it's a
good thing to rescue a sheep on the
Sabbath day.
If it's a good thing to rescue the
sheep on a Sabbath day, it's a better
thing to rescue a man be it Sabbath
or no Sabbath.
You know, it wasn't safe to enter into
an argument with Jesus of Nazareth.
He never got away without being made aware
of the folly of your speech and the
foulness of your spirit.
They did not.
Again, Jesus healed, we are told in verse
22, a demon possessed man who was both
blind and mute so that he could both
talk and see.
This is very wonderful really.
We must come back to it on another
day to see how here we have three
miracles of divine mercy rolled into one.
Salvation from demonic power, the gift of speech
returned, and the gift of sight renewed.
So you have salvation from the power of
Satan and the ability to see and to
speak all given by one person at one
time.
It included both physical and spiritual aspects.
Now, Jesus overheard some of these people.
And what he overheard was this.
Some of them were asking, is not this
the son of David?
We've never seen things like this happen before.
This is not an everyday event.
We've never heard the high priest speak words
that had such consequences.
We've never heard anyone among us doing this
kind of thing.
It's altogether different from what we've known in
our past experience.
Is not this person the son of David?
That is the Messiah, the promised Messiah, the
deliverer, the Savior that God had promised, greater
than David, greater son, great David's greater son,
and Savior of men.
And they began to question.
You see, they were putting the scriptures together
and relating the scriptures to life.
And they came to conclusion, it must be
him.
Yet they just posed the question.
They didn't come to the conclusion at that
point.
Hearing some of the witnesses asking that, the
Pharisees, the Pharisees were absolutely angered.
That anybody should think that Jesus of Nazareth
can possibly be the son of David and
the Messiah.
And so, you remember what they did.
I've already referred to it.
It's in this particular context that emerges.
They couldn't deny the miracles.
That's very significant.
They didn't try to say all this is
a fake.
They didn't attempt to say, now that man
has not got his sight.
It's a joke.
They didn't say that man is not speaking.
They could hear him speaking, I suppose.
It was all surreal.
They couldn't deny the reality of the miracles.
But what can they do then?
Oh, they were cunning.
Satan is cunning.
He may be doing it, but he can
only do it because he's in league with
a prince of demons.
Jesus made mincemeat of that unreasonable response.
He says, if that were so, he said
it would mean simply this, that Satan's kingdom
is already divided against itself.
And a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand
very long.
It'll soon crumble.
And that was so evidently untrue.
No, no, he says, it's not that.
You know that.
If you want to burgle a house, you've
got to first, you've got first to bind
the strong man who keeps the house.
And it's only then you can go in
and burgle it.
I have burgled Satan's household.
And the very fact that I have snatched
from his hands this dear one and returned
sanity to him and liberty to him means
this, that whether you like it or not,
I have the power, I have the authority
to do it and have done it.
What does this principle say then in relation
to Jesus?
You see, the fruit of his ministry was
so evidently good.
On the physical plane, on the moral plane,
on the spiritual plane, on the intellectual plane,
he was able to explain, he was able
to bring understanding as well as do that
which was gracious and healing and satisfying for
men.
He met the needs of men on all
levels.
Surely that is good.
And that good fruit of his good life
can only mean that in the depths of
his being, he is a good tree.
Evil fruit does not grow on a good
tree.
The evil tree cannot produce good fruit, says
Jesus.
Now let me apply the principle to very
briefly to those making the charge against Jesus
that he was doing what he did in
league with Beelzebub, the prince of demons.
Apply this same principle to them without going
into the details now.
Let me just refer again to something which
we've mentioned before.
Just this one thing, this unwillingness to concede
the truth, to concede the obvious, this determination
to wriggle out of the obvious fact that
Jesus was doing what he was doing in
the power of God and going so far
as not only refusing to accept the inevitable
logic of it, but even to attribute goodness
to an evil source.
What kind of a tree does that fruit
grow on?
Well the answer is obvious of course.
This kind of thing can only come from
hearts that are sorted by sin, hearts that
are spoiled by Satan, hearts that are darkened
and evil and iniquitous and bound and lost.
So Jesus said to them unhesitatingly, as I
have indicated already, you brood of vipers, how
can you who are evil say anything good?
You cannot acknowledge the truth even though it's
evident before your eyes.
Why?
Because you're evil.
You cannot confess me to be the son
of God.
Why?
Because your hearts are evil.
The God has come down and the kingdom
of God is among you and I do
these things by the Holy Spirit among you.
You will not, you will not acknowledge it.
No amount of persuasion, no amount of pressure,
nothing short of the power of God changing
your hearts can cause you to acknowledge what
is true and what is obvious.
Your heart is bad.
A connection universally binding, an application of the
principle that was immediately revealing both of the
goodness of the Lord Jesus and of the
evil of his enemies.
But I want to move one step further.
I want us to look at some implications
that are personally challenging as we consider all
this.
You know, it's all very well for us
to be sitting in a reasonably comfortable church,
two thousand years after the event, sitting in
judgment on these ancient Jews and saying some
terrible things about them, even though those things
are true.
But dare we ask whether we would have
acted any differently if we were in their
shoes in those days of long ago?
You see, you examine this passage in terms
of principle and you will see that Jesus
is doing two things.
One, he is undermining their authority.
Two, he is showing up their hypocrisy.
And this is the question I want to
ask you to consider this morning.
What kind of foot do you bear when
Jesus challenges your authority and when Jesus reveals
your hypocrisy, when Jesus challenges your authority?
Now, this is the main thing that has
been happening in this context.
You see, before Jesus came, these scribes and
Pharisees and their fellow travelers, they were really
the ecclesiastical intelligentsia.
They were the leadership of the church of
the day.
They occupied the first place.
They had the authority.
They were trained.
They were accredited.
They carried the key that capacitated them to
teach anywhere the things of God.
They were supposed to be the exponents of
the law and of the prophets.
And some of them were given the special
power to apply the law and the prophets
to life in general.
You see, they were the important people and
they were very rarely challenged.
Sometimes, I'm quite sure there were people who
disobeyed them, who didn't follow what they said,
but they were very rarely challenged.
To challenge them was to ask for trouble,
because they were accredited.
And to challenge an accredited leader and teacher
in Jewry was something terrible.
You suffered the consequences.
And in consequence of that, you see, they
were honored.
They were feted.
They were the important people.
And then came this man from nowhere, from
the backwoods, from Nazareth of all places, a
little unknown place.
And someone was able to ask, can any
good thing ever come out of Nazareth?
Nazareth has never produced a prophet.
Nazareth has never produced a political leader.
Nazareth has never produced anybody of significance.
And then there comes this nobody from Nazareth.
And he begins to show that he has
authority that these other people didn't have.
When he spoke, he spoke.
Now, I don't say this.
They said this.
He speaks as one having authority.
And not as the scribes and the Pharisees.
They said that, not me.
And when he uttered his word, the blind
received their sight.
And the deaf heard again, just because he
commanded them to hear.
Even the dead came out of their graves
when he called Lazarus, come forth.
Lazarus came out of the grave.
The dead came to life.
He had authority, you see.
His word was powerful, and all its effects
were good, redemptive, and gracious.
Now, as time passed, Jesus gathered around him
a whole crowd of people who had witnessed
some of these things.
Not all of them, I don't suppose.
Many of them had witnessed two-thirds of
the miracles performed by him.
But someone in the family had been healed,
or a neighbor had been healed, or someone
had come under the influence of his authoritative
word, and the demon possessed had come back
to sanity, and a new way of living.
And so these people began to flood after
him, and they looked upon him as the
only one that had authority, and they contrasted
him with the scribes and the Pharisees, and
said, never man spake like this man.
We've never heard it like this.
Nothing like this has ever been heard among
us.
Nothing like this has ever been seen among
us.
Now, now my friend, listen.
You see what's happening?
The very authority that Jesus was gaining by
the good fruit of his word and his
work was undermining the authority of the scribes
and the Pharisees.
And if things are going to be allowed
to go on in this direction sooner or
later, it's, it's going to lead to a
collision.
Something terrible is going to happen.
Have you ever known that?
Have you ever known the Lord Jesus to
challenge your authority?
How do you react?
What do you say?
What do you think?
How do you react when Jesus says, man
you're wrong?
Let me give you an illustration of what
I mean.
Maybe someone here this morning you were brought
up in a Christian church, perhaps, or you
may not have been.
But you've always thought that if you did
your little bit, if you paid so many
dollars for your goods, and you paid your
bills in time, and you were reasonably kind,
and you didn't, you didn't lose your temper
with people, and you walked a fairly straight
line, you've generally thought, well now that's all
right, I'll, I'll be saved.
God will not turn me out of his
kingdom.
God will not keep me from his heaven
if I walk a reasonably straight line, and
I'm better than so and so.
And then God comes to you in his
word and he says, man, you must be
born again.
See, that's what happened to Nicodemus.
Jesus came with his authority to the authoritative
teacher in Israel, the teacher, and he said
to him, man, you don't know anything about
it.
You're going to start again from scratch.
You have got to be born again.
How do you react?
Now you good people, especially if you're religious,
especially if you read your Bible habitually, and
you pray before you go to bed, and
you love the hymns of Zion, and you
come to church not only on a Sunday
morning, perhaps on a Sunday evening, and you
even perhaps go to a prayer group.
Now that's, that's, that's amazing.
And you even do that.
And you think that all these things added
together will give you positively a place in
the kingdom of God.
God cannot say no to you, but the
word of Scripture comes to you and says,
eternal life is the gift of God.
All your righteousnesses are as filthy rags.
They come to naught.
In the balances of God, all that you're
depending upon is naught, nil, nothing.
Now how do you react?
Now what are you saying in your soul?
Is the fruit good, agreeable?
Do you concede to him his God-given
authority?
Or do you try to make a case
against him, and you bring some counter charges
against him, or against his people, or against
his church, and you try to wriggle out
of it in some way or other, in
order, you see, to establish your authority over
against his?
I find so many people doing that.
Do you know why they do it?
Because their hearts are evil.
And there is only one answer to that,
and it is this, is to have a
change of heart.
My time is gone, almost, and therefore I
want to hurry to say two things, in
closing.
Two things, and they're very simple, but I
think that they're very important.
One, the basic need of our world today,
is the need for hearts made new.
Make the heart, make the tree good.
I don't care whether you think of men
in distant places or near.
It really makes no difference.
Whether you think of the cultured or the
illiterate, it makes very, very little difference.
Oh, I know we need education.
I know we need our political programs.
We need medical programs.
They all have their place.
But unless we can make the tree good,
then our healthy, and wealthy, and educated society
is becoming increasingly ungovernable.
And not only is democracy going out to
the door, but something evil is coming in
through the back door.
Men and women, our nation, and the nations
of the West, are becoming ungovernable.
And whether you've got liberal, or conservative, or
anything else in power, we are moving into
a time, and an era, and a situation
when men cannot be governed anymore.
And there is only one thing that will
make them governable, a change of heart.
We are coming up to a general election.
Now far be it from me to veer
and to influence you politically.
That's not what I want to do.
I pray that all of us will be
thinking seriously about this, about principles that are
involved.
Deep principles, moral principles, principles that are going
to effect tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
And come to our decisions in the light
of the throne of God, and know what
we're doing, and doing it in the faith
that we do His good will.
But now listen, unless men's hearts are
going to be changed, the time may be
coming very near when another form of government
will be necessary in a land like Canada.
And it will not be democratic.
And the only thing that will hold this
back is, if the hearts of men can
be made governable, if the tree can be
made good.
The other thing I wanted to say follows
naturally from that.
The prime business of the church of Jesus
Christ is simply this, it's to make the
tree good.
See it doesn't really matter, it doesn't really
matter what else we may be good at,
unless we can make the tree good.
We may be great at making friends, bringing
people together to sit together around cups of
coffee, cups of tea.
And they may go dancing with coffee to
hell.
And the whole universe is falling on top
of us.
We may be able to organize this and
organize that.
We've got our committees galore.
But unless you and I can change the
hearts of men and give ourselves to this
as a whole community of redeemed people, brothers
and sisters, we're not doing what God has
called upon us to do.
It's not enough just to preach, it's not
enough just to talk.
We must be about the business of making
the tree good.
You see no one else can do this.
Your politicians can't do this, save only as
private individuals if they're Christians, not as political
movements.
Your educators cannot do this, save only as
private individuals if they're Christians.
Others can't do this, save only as individual
Christians.
But this is the business of the whole
church.
I don't care who you are this morning.
I don't care what church you belong to.
If you have repented of your sin and
you've come to Christ and you own him
as your Lord, my friend, it's your business
and mine.
And whatever else you were doing from Monday
morning to Saturday night is only secondary to
this.
This is the prime business of the church.
It's to make the tree good.
We need the power of God upon us.
I need it, you need it, you good
members of Knox, all of us need it,
that we may see this, that as a
team, as a community of people, we should
be wrapped up together in this holiness, sacred
crusade, not just counting scalps and heads.
So-and-so has made a decision, that's
all right, but we need to make the
tree good.
And we need to be involved in a
ministry, not only from the pulpit but close
at hand, that enables the tree to be
changed and transformed, that it brings forth nothing
but good.
That's the task of the church.
Oh, God knows how far short we fall
of it, how very far short.
But here is our calling.
I ask you before God this morning, what
is your reply to this kind of challenge
from our Lord's Word?
Make the tree good, and you will make
its fruit good.
Do you want to see a society that
is God honoring?
I know you do.
Do you want to see men in every
segment of society, through legal profession, the medical
profession, and all the professions, the teaching profession,
go down the lines, go throughout society?
Do you want to see men who are
God honoring?
You've got the key, Christian.
We as a church of Jesus Christ have
been given the good news of the Savior,
who is able to make men new, for
if any man be in Christ Jesus, there
is a new creation.
Old things are passed away.
All things have become new.
There is a new creature.
We have, by the Word of God, we
have the means whereby the old nature can
be dealt with, and the new nature can
grow and blossom and flourish and increase in
strength and in stature, until at the day
of Christ we shall be like unto Him.
Oh, glorious gospel!
Oh, wonderful Savior!
People of God!
Let's put ourselves afresh into His hands today,
which is a sultry summer day, in many
ways akin to many a Lord's Day and
many a Sabbath Day in Galilee long ago.
It's the day when Jesus calls us to
this holy, this high task, not to entertain
sinners on their way to lostness, but to
save them, and by the grace of God,
be the agents of renewal in thought and
heart and spirit, until they grow up into
the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus
our Lord.
Let us pray.
Lord God Almighty, we bless Your holy name
for this Word of Yours that has given
us by the Holy Spirit.
We thank You that the Word written and
the Word incarnate, both the product of the
Holy Spirit, for Jesus was conceived in the
Virgin's womb, and the Word of Scripture was
conceived likewise of Him.
We thank You that the Holy Spirit has
given us such a Word to direct us.
You know, Father, how in our heart of
hearts we respond to You when You challenge
our authority and say to us that we
are wrong or show up our hypocrisy.
Grant us a heart that has been so
radically changed that at every turn we shall
be prepared to honor You and worship You
and trust You and obey You, whatever You
say, and accept Your judgments as final and
adequate for all time.
Oh Lord, hear us for ourselves, individually, for
our families, for our nation, for the world
of nations.
And we pray, O Spirit of God, that
in these days of decadence and spiritual darkness,
You will again come to Your church and
enable us, Your people, to engage more fully
and more adequately, and if it please You,
more successfully in this business of making the
tree good.
For the glory of Your great name.
Amen.